Stranger, And Stranger Still
by Ravensara
Summary: One of the guys accidentally brings a stranger into the midst of the Ghostbusters, and there proves to be far more to her than any of them could ever imagine.
1. Chapter 1

1

The little arms of the psychokinetic energy meter stretched high, tiny lights flashing manically while an electronic alarm kept beat. Then it froze, all of the lights lit, the device emitting an annoying, steady wail. Blinking in bafflement, the man who held it adjusted a dial, attempted manual manipulation of one of the arms, poked ineffectually at grey silicone buttons until the sound finally died. The lights flickered twice before the PKE meter gave up the ghost.

He became aware of a presence too close to him. Inches from the hand-held device peered a pale face enhanced by two large, extraordinarily clear, light blue eyes fringed thickly by dark lashes. The startled man slowly lowered the defunct meter and spoke uncertainly. "Uh…hello."

The girl beamed, a faint blush of pleasure tinting her high cheekbones as she replied breathily, "Hi."

"Um," the man continued, reaching to absently scratch at his jaw while passersby ignored them. "Do you know me? Have we met? Uh, can I help you…Miss?"

She reached for the PKE meter and he moved it beyond her grasp, smiling benignly as he forced the little arms down and dropped the object into a pocket of his long, beige raincoat. The stranger appeared disconcerted, then returned her gaze to his and smiled again.

The two remained still, grinning stupidly at each other for some unknown length of time, the world continuing to revolve, their own little shared space empty and seemingly frozen like the meter had become.

Uncomfortable, the man cleared his throat. He extended a hand, realized it was the one he'd just had near his lips before politely exchanging it for the other one.

The girl regarded his hand as though surprised she had not been offered something specific, and when she lifted her gaze to his again, she appeared perplexed.

"Did you want…an autograph?" he tried, thinking perhaps she was star struck, but shy.

"A what?" she asked.

He pantomimed scribbles in the air. "My, uh…my signature?"

Her look became vaguely suspicious. "For what?"

Swallowing, he licked his lips and inhaled deeply. "Well, then…okay…then."

Her features brightened with expectation.

"Bye," he told her, lifting a palm.

"Bye," she repeated, mimicking his gesture, but making a quick fist before opening her hand flat again.

_Like she got me,_ he thought, slightly unnerved as he turned smartly and strolled off into the flow of pedestrians. When he looked back he saw that she stood before the black statue he'd been examining in the middle of the sidewalk, smiling his way like she was happy to see him.


	2. Chapter 2

2

"That was quick," noted the tall, powerfully built man, glancing up from where he sat replacing the long laces of his work boots.

"I cut it short," replied the other as he exited the still warm and ticking vehicle, closing the heavy door over with insufficient force to shut it flush. "Something-"

The seated man closed his eyes. "Oh, no."

"…strange happened."

"Always?"

The newcomer nodded.

"I know you, Ray. You won't let this go. When did you want to go back, check things out?"

Ray considered. "Honestly…I don't know if it was a place…so much as a person."

"Random kook?"

He began to describe the incident with the PKE meter.

Heels could be heard clicking toward their location. "Ray?"

"Huh?" he responded, cutting himself short.

"Are you leaving again soon?"

"I wasn't," he answered, watching the petite woman hawk the windshield of the '59 Cadillac ambulance he'd just parked in the garage.

She eyed him dubiously over the tops of her severely angled eyeglasses. "Then you could at least introduce your guest to us."

"My guest?" He squinted toward the passenger seat, gradually making out a pale face he'd initially written off as light reflecting softly off the glass. He cut his eyes toward the other man who rose slowly, staring at the vehicle.

The woman rolled her eyes and blew noisily through her pursed lips. "Greetings. Welcome to Ghostbusters Headquarters," she said, marching toward the door to swing it wide. She was surprised to see that Ray's guest was much younger than she'd originally guessed. The stranger gazed expectantly at her for a moment, then unbuckled her seatbelt and took her time sliding from the Ectomobile's passenger seat.

"Who's that?" asked the other man.

"I…I don't know," Ray replied breathlessly.

No one moved or spoke for a moment. The teenager stood calmly surveying her surroundings. "Dr. Stantz?" the receptionist prompted uneasily.

Ray moved swiftly, approaching the girl he recognized as the same one he'd seen when the PKE meter had malfunctioned. "Uh, hello," he said awkwardly. "I-I'm Dr. Stantz, and, um, this is my colleague, Dr., uh, I mean, Winston Zeddemore. This is, uh," he stammered, focusing on the tiny woman with the richly hued dark auburn hair.

"Janine Melnitz," supplied the redhead, offering a slender hand bedecked with bohemian chic silver and bronze rings at the end of an arm that clattered with junky, but fashionable bracelets.

The pale girl smiled faintly, making contact with the offering, but only lightly passing her hand through the grasp of the other. "What…is this?" she queried, her voice soft and breathy.

Janine was surprised. She turned her body and glanced upward. "This is the Ghostbusters Headquarters. Don't ya know anything about us?" She cast an accusing eye at Dr. Stantz.

He shrugged. "I didn't see her get in the car."

Winston scoffed, "She was sitting right beside you, Ray."

"No, she wasn't," he insisted weakly. "Well, if she was, I never noticed her."

"What's your name?" Janine tried, bending toward the stranger.

"Mm-manda," came the reply, the first syllable sounding more like a soft grunt.

"Would you like a tour of the facility?"

"'kay," Amanda answered with a shrug.

Janine took the girl by the hand and glared Dr. Stantz's way as they strolled off together. He turned to look at Winston and shrugged.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Because the newcomer seemed reticent, Janine kept up a lively banter to fill the silence, reciting amusing anecdotes as she walked the teen through the office area, then upstairs to glimpse the dorm-style bedroom, the drab but clean break room, and the more cozy rec room. Amanda's eyes were wide and she nodded distractedly now and then, but she displayed no more than idle curiosity, reacting with a faint smile at best without ever showing any surprise or giggling.

The woman queried, "You've never heard of us?"

"No."

"You're not from New York, are you?"

The girl contemplated before admitting, "Montana."

"Montana? Really? Well you're a long way from home. What brings you to New York?"

Every question took an unusual amount of time to process, accompanied by looks of difficult concentrative efforts. "Looking for…someone."

Janine suggested, "Family? Boyfriend?"

A hesitation. "Boyfriend?"

"Do your parents know you're here? In New York?"

"Mm…no."

Eyes rolling while she fought to remain composed, the receptionist crossed her arms over her chest and sighed. "You're not a runaway, are you?"

"I…yes."

"Oh, Lord. Honey, you can't just go wandering about the city alone! You are alone, aren't you?"

Amanda glanced about. "Yes?"

Janine took her hand and slowed her speech, thinking the girl didn't seem especially bright. "I don't mean right here, right now. Do you have someone in New York that you're staying with? Does someone watch over you?"

The teen looked relieved. "Yes. I…have someone."

"Oh, good! Do they know you're here right now?"

"No."

"What time do they expect you back?"

The girl shrugged. "Whenever."

"Ah. Do you think maybe you should call 'em? Let 'em know you're all right?"

The teen cocked her head back, her lip curled slightly, and one eyebrow rose as if that was the most ridiculous suggestion she had ever heard.

"Well," Janine concluded, hoisting a brow of her own. "Okay, then."

Zeddemore and Stantz crested the stairs and ceased conversation when they spied the ladies. "Enjoying the tour?" asked Ray.

"We've seen just about everything," replied Janine.

"You showed her the containment unit?"

"I wouldn't dream of it."

He held the defective PKE meter aloft. "Wanna see some science in action?"

The girl shrugged.

Winston began, "I don't think-"

"C'mon," Ray insisted, gesturing the way with the device as he turned toward the laboratory.

Winston's eyes rolled heavenward and Janine sighed, shaking her head.

"Egon?" called Stantz as he entered the room.

"Over here, Ray."

"We have a visitor."

"Human?"

"Well, I haven't run any tests on her."

"A pity." The tall, bespectacled man took no notice of their guest as he tinkered with a large contraption that appeared to've been slapped together by a band of teenaged nerds.

Ray set the meter near him. "This malfunctioned."

"What were you doing with it at the time?"

"Trying to get a reading off that statue of Cybele in SoHo."

Egon glanced at Ray as though he considered his off-hours pursuits mere folly.

"Anyway, the arms spiked, the alarm wouldn't shut off, and the lights froze before it died."

"Died?" He set down a tiny screwdriver and regarded the PKE meter without touching it. "What was the last reading before it went kaput?"

Ray shrugged. "It looked like it was picking something up, but failed before I could lock in a reading."

"Did you try whacking it?"

"I always forget that," Dr. Stantz admitted.

The taller man was momentarily distracted. "Oh…hello."

Ray said, "Egon, uh, Dr. Spengler, this is, uh-"

"Amanda," supplied Janine. "I hear a phone. Be right back." She swiftly departed.

Egon stared unabashedly at the teen who studied him warily.

"You want me to whack it, then?"

Winston's brow furrowed. "Egon?" He glanced at Ray.

"Egon?" tried Ray. He poked the other man's bicep.

Winston waved a hand before his blank expression.

Finally, he asked softly, "Was it pointed at her when it malfunctioned?"

Ray blinked. "No. No, it was aimed at Cybele, but when I looked up again, she _was_ right in front of me."

Dr. Spengler turned to pluck another meter from its calibrating/charging station, turned it on and watched the girl beyond it. The arms rose quickly, it uttered a loud, long electronic wail and the lights brightened considerably before it died with a squeal and a sigh. "Where did you find her?"

Winston moved slightly farther from the girl.

"I didn't. I mean, she wasn't there, and then she was…I mean-"

"You didn't notice her before the malfunction."

"Correct."

Egon returned his attention to the newcomer as he set the meter down on the nearest flat surface. "Do you experience bouts of RSPK?"

"Whuh?" asked the girl.

"Poltergeist activity," clarified Dr. Stantz. "Or anything like it."

"Polter…polter…."

He pressed on, "Do electronics behave strangely around you? Are you unable to wear the same wristwatch for any great length of time? Do you sometimes receive phone calls and there's nobody there? Do street lights tend to flicker when you walk beneath them?"

Amanda looked confused.

"Just because she showed up when the PKE meter broke doesn't mean she's a…a…anything special," Winston reminded them.

"True," said Ray.

"Let's test her," Egon said with a grin.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Before they were able to attach an electrode-studded helmet to her head, Janine returned to relate the details of the conversation she'd had on the phone. The moment she saw what was happening she flipped out. "Halt! Stop! No, no, no! What have I told you about this?"

"See?" sighed Winston. "I told you."

"We're just showing her what we do around here," Ray protested.

"You're testing her? No way! I've explained this to you before—there _has _to be paperwork involved! It's called, 'cover your butt' thanks to the delightful busybodies with the EPA and down at City Hall."

Ray pointed out, "She's too young to sign paperwork."

"Even worse!" The irate receptionist admonished.

Winston asked the girl how old she was.

"Dunno," she replied. "Not sure."

Ray chuckled in disbelief.

"I'm seldom certain of my own age," Egon admitted, patting the pocket he thought his wallet should be in and finding it empty.

Winston began to remove the odd apparatus from the girl.

"I got a call from a realtor about a brownstone he needs proof has been cleaned before the buyer will take it," Janine told them.

"When were we last there?" queried Egon.

"Never. Never got a call from there. He says there's never been a complaint from anybody. But his buyer insists he gets proof before anything's signed."

Ray looked at Egon and shrugged as though they had just exchanged information telepathically. "Wanna go on a bust with us?" he asked the girl.

Janine scowled, Winston looked dubious for a second, then drew his lower lip up and nodded. It would be a simple and quick investigation. They would verify that no peculiar energies or entities were present, and then leave.


	5. Chapter 5

5

Ray found a baseball cap with the Ghostbusters logo on it and gave it to the girl to wear. Soon they departed in the quiet car, no lights, and no siren, not even wearing their standard jumpsuit-style uniforms. He tried to explain the functions of some of the equipment to the girl, but she seemed bored and even unimpressed. Winston made the most headway with her as they rode through the city.

"You're from Montana? What part?"

She shrugged.

"You like New York?"

"Uh-huh."

"Where do you go to school?"

She made a face.

"Do you like school?"

She shook her head.

"Do you have a lot of friends?"

Finally brightening, she turned her gaze away from the passing scenery. "Yes!"

"Where do you hang out? What do you like to do?"

"ArtReal," she answered as though that should cover it.

"ArtReal," he repeated, unable to imagine what that was.

"Sounds like an art studio," suggested Ray. "Are you an artist, Amanda?"

"No."

"Is it a club?" tried Winston.

"No."

"A mall? A restaurant? A café? A coffee shop?"

"No." She never embellished any of her responses, and they quickly grew tired of interrogating her.

The realtor's BMW was parked near the residence and he exited the vehicle as soon as he recognized the Ecto-1. He looked disappointed as they emerged, expecting full uniforms and sci-fi gear warmed up and ready. Ray stepped forward to greet him while Winston and Egon grabbed the items they thought they might need. The realtor was dressed casually in a pinkish-beige polo shirt sporting a small embroidered golf ball on one side of his chest. His heavyweight, expensive wristwatch glistened in the same shade of pinkish gold as his belt buckle. His hair had been blow-dried and his chinos neatly creased. His shoes were immaculate. Despite the fading afternoon light he wore metal-framed sunglasses atop his head. He noticed the teenager immediately and his disapproving gaze followed her everywhere. "Why is there a child here?" he finally blurted.

"My niece," Egon replied. "Ready, Dr. Stantz?"

Ray finished up his conversation with the guy. "So, we should have something printed up for you by tomorrow morning."

"Could you overnight it to me?"

"You work at night?"

"No," the guy admitted. "I just want it as soon as possible."

"You will receive it as soon as we are able to get it to you," Dr. Spengler answered him, and the man fidgeted under the scientist's imperious gaze.

"C'mon," Winston told the girl, smiling to himself.

The realtor's lock had already been removed and the door swung open easily. Winston and Amanda waited before it while Egon tried to get a general read from a PKE meter that immediately squealed and died.

"What does that mean?" the realtor grunted suspiciously.

Egon smiled as he reholstered the device. "Nothing. Nothing at all." They had a single functioning meter left and he shook his head at Ray when he offered to activate it. The teen stood directly before them.

"K-II?" asked Ray.

"It'll do," Egon told him.

The K-II meter read electromagnetic fluctuations and not actual psychokinetic energy. As Ray mounted the front steps, it showed spikes when he swept it past Winston and the girl, noticeably climbing when it was nearer her. With a shrug he moved past them into the house.

The guys had an array of tools at hand and utilized all of them—a digital camera with multiple lenses and filters, a digital ambient temperature probe, a meter that detected high and low frequency sounds beyond normal human hearing, and a long, slender, tube-like probe that measured the proliferation of airborne ionized particles. Drs. Spengler and Stantz went into their zones, each focused on collecting data while Winston softly kept up a running commentary for the benefit of their guest. Within twenty minutes they had canvassed the entire site and absolutely nothing untoward had been detected.

The realtor was relieved when they emerged and explained that the house appeared "clean". He was on his cell phone, attempting to contact the buyer before he'd even entered his car.

"Well, that was uneventful," Egon sighed as he deposited his gear within the Ecto-1.

"We still got paid," Winston pointed out.

Ray was standing beside the car, staring at the girl. "I want to test her."

Said Egon, "She's definitely the source of some kind of mild disturbance."

"She's broken three PKE meters," Ray reminded him.

With a sigh, Winston laid a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. "Do you know what Zener cards are?"

"No."

He mentioned, "We don't need paperwork for that."

Egon's mouth twisted to one side, and then he said, "I guess it's a start."


	6. Chapter 6

6

They got a call on the way back in. "Pete's back," Ray said, still on his phone. "Wants to know if we can meet him at an apartment building for a quick inspection."

Egon asked, "Is the place actually haunted?"

Ray relayed the query. "Oh, yeah. Years of residents seeing and hearing things."

"Scary things?" asked Winston.

Ray waited for a response. "Well, some of the residents have felt a little uneasy from time to time. A few people have moved out 'cause it bothered them, but otherwise nothing actually violent or…what was that?" He listened for a moment. "Oh, a plant once got knocked over and some old woman's cat jumped off her balcony and ran away when a picture fell off the wall."

"Sounds minor," Winston said.

"Worth checking out," Egon decided.

"We'll be there," Ray told Pete. He ended the call and spoke the address into the phone's GPS navigation system.

"This time," Winston told the girl, "you might actually get to see something."

"I think she should wait in the car," Egon said from the driver's seat. "We have only one PKE meter left."

"Do you mind waiting?" asked Ray, turning around to face her from his seat.

The girl shrugged.

Winston asked her, "Is anyone waiting for you? Do you need to call anyone?"

"No."

Ray asked, "Really? I mean…you don't think we're just going to take you in like a little lost dog, do you? Make you an honorary member of the team?"

She sighed.

Egon decided, "When we get through here, you need to tell us where you live or where you're staying so we can drop you off."

"'kay," she said indifferently, returning her gaze to the shops that lined the street they followed.

Ray looked at Egon and again it was as if they shared some silent form of communication. Winston chalked it up to the pair knowing each other for so long. He understood the look anyway; they were both intrigued by the notion that the stranger was indeed somehow special in a paranormal way.


	7. Chapter 7

7

Dr. Venkman met them out front where he stood laughing with a pretty redhead. The look between Egon and Ray signified that they both suspected Peter had promised her a favor as a means of impressing his way into her bedroom.

"We _are_ getting paid for this," Winston warned, wary of Venkman's chicanery.

Pete walked over to drape an arm across his shoulders. "Relax, Wince. We might run into a Class 3 Repeater at best. Hey—how come you guys aren't suited up?"

They ignored him as they retrieved the same gear they had used at the last site. Ray asked, "You want Thai after this?"

"I was thinkin' Mexican," said Winston.

"Filipino," suggested Egon.

"Filipino?" echoed Ray.

"What's the hold-up, guys?" Venkman chuckled uneasily. "Grab the packs and let's hit it!" He had draped himself over the redhead who seemed to find nearly everything hilarious.

"This is just a preliminary investigation," announced Egon as he grabbed the last working PKE meter.

An elderly woman in a faded, floral print housedress emerged to gawk at them. "Are you here to take care of Old Henry?"

"_If_ we find evidence of anything untoward," Ray began, "to whom should we send the bill?"

"Ah, that'd be Mr. Trask, I guess," she muttered. She blinked at the men and said, "I guess," again with a shrug.

Winston cut his eyes toward Raymond who adopted a stoic face. "Shall we begin?" asked Dr. Stantz, hitching up his belt.

Peter drafted the young woman for their tour guide, but it soon became clear that she hadn't been a tenant there for long and her story changed a few times under questioning—most of them sounding less and less like any kind of actual paranormal activity.

"So, a voice in the laundry room called your name?" Venkman prompted as the rest of the team stared dully at the equipment they'd brought.

"Well, maybe, but I think it said _Callie_ and my name's actually Kaley."

"And had you been drinking on that occasion?" Ray piped politely. "Where you perhaps under any type of medication?"

"Oh, I'd had the flu," she admitted, "and I was takin' sizzurp-you know, 'cause it contains cough syrup an' all."

Winston smiled grimly, not needing to see the look Ray was undoubtedly shooting Egon's way.

"Well, I see no reason to continue," Egon sighed as they stood at the base of a stairwell. "This place is so clean it squeaks."

"But what about Henry?" bleated the old woman who'd been trailing them. "Everybody's seen him."

Ray asked, "Who is Henry, ma'am?"

"Why, he was the maintenance man way back in the 40's. I had an aunt who lived here and she said he was killed in a boiler explosion. He still does his job, though."

"Well, that sucks," Pete decided.

"Wonder where they send his checks?" Winston muttered.

Two small boys emerged from behind a door they'd been spying on the activity from. A television could be heard in the brightly lit apartment they came from. "My name is Andrew," the taller of the two announced importantly, stepping boldly within their midst. "An' I seen old, broken electric cords get pulled outta sockets by themself accause Ol' Henry knew it weren't safe."

The smaller one joined him. "I'm Tommy," he said shyly, "an' I seen 'im smooth down the rugs in the hallways so's no one don't trip over them an' fall." He nodded owlishly, his lips pink and wet and slack.

"See?" said Kaley. "I told you there's a ghost here."

"Boiler's in the basement," decided Dr. Spengler. "Which way might that be?"

By the time they'd arrived there, they had accumulated a small crowd of curious tenants. "You're not gonna bust 'em?" asked little Tommy worriedly.

"Not if you don't want us to," Winston reassured him.

They swept the area with their equipment and got nothing. Then Egon inquired about Henry's living arrangement. Soon they were checking out an abandoned apartment used for storage on the top floor and even the rooftop where Henry had once kept pigeons as a hobby. "Nada," reported Spengler.

"Not even a peep?" asked Pete. He grabbed the PKE meter from Egon and waved it threateningly at their audience, causing the lot of them to move back a step or two, then ran it up and down the length of Spengler's body for comedic effect. "Well, caca," he muttered, turning it on himself. He swung it toward Kaley and pushed it toward her nose so that her eyes crossed, and then at her cleavage.

"I'm hungry," decided Winston.

"I think there's a new Peruvian place just a couple of blocks from the firehouse," Egon mentioned.

Ray eyed him strangely.

Peter implored, "C'mon, guys! These lovely people have all wandered thoughtfully out of their apartments in various states of casual and even pajama-wear to insist they have a ghost here…somewhere…and I for one am inclined to believe 'em."

"You could sleep over," Kaley suggested. "See if he appears at midnight to walk the halls."

"I could stay the night," he said, reluctant to release the PKE meter when Egon reached for it. "But I'll need this."

"We need it," Spengler told him as the device moved back and forth between them.

"You've got like five more."

"We have three more, and they're all malfunctioning." He staggered backward when Venkman abruptly released the device.

"Well, that's significant," he said, casting a sly glance the way of his prey. "So, what's up with that? How'd you guys break 'em all?"

"We didn't break 'em," Stantz explained. "I met this girl today-"

"Oh, and you called the guys and broke out all the equipment just to impress her," he said, nudging the redhead with an elbow. She giggled.

"No, Peter, she's a…well, that is…we don't know exactly what she is-"

"She's just a teenaged girl," interrupted Zeddemore, shaking his head. "Maybe she has strange things happen around her when she's angry or somethin'."

Peter stepped forward, chest thrust outward. "You mean, like _Carrie_?" He scanned the gathered residents to see how many of them had caught the horror-movie reference.

"We're done here," Egon decided again, shutting down his equipment. Ray withdrew a business card from a pocket and handed it to the old woman. "If you need us, feel free to call."

"Show's over folks," Stantz told them with a gentle grin. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay…_oh_."

As they descended the stairs, Peter became irate. "Guys! You know there's a ghost here!"

"I'll admit that something's undoubtedly happened here on sporadic occasions over the years…possibly," Egon told him, "but when all of our detection equipment is flatlining, there's literally nothing for us to do."

Venkman grumbled to himself. "I was gonna spend the night."

"Yes," Winston told him, "you do tend to haunt a number of different places around the city yourself."

They emerged onto sidewalk and found a couple of kids inspecting their vehicle. A young guy in shorts, flip-flops, and a peach colored T-shirt begged for a photo and got a teen to take it for him. "The guys back at the dorm won't believe this!" he enthused, collecting his phone and immediately posting the shot to some social media outlet.

"You comin' with?" Raymond asked Pete.

"Yeah. I had to ditch my buddy back at The Ear Inn so I could walk Kaley home."

Eyes skyward, Winston mentioned, "I'm sure he appreciated that."

"He owes me money," Venkman replied.

Winston walked around the car so he could enter on the far side. Peter continued to answer the questions of the neighborhood kids until he finally grew tired of the attention and dropped into the rear seat of the running vehicle. He turned to say something to Winston as he reached to close the door and noticed the stranger sandwiched between them. "Whoa! One of the buggers snuck in here!"

"That's Amanda," Ray informed him, turning halfway around in his seat.

Peter pulled the door tight and fixed her with a skeptical glare. "This is the kid you were talkin' about?"

"Yeah."

"She was out here, alone, in this car, with millions of dollars of delicate and valuable equipment—most of which could easily remove your choice of high-rises off the map—while the rest of you were inside doing an investigation on that apartment complex?"

Ray mentioned, "She seems harmless."

"Does she? Egon, where's that PKE meter you had?"

"You're not going to use it on her, are you?"

"Naw. I just wanna take a look at it."

Spengler pushed it over to Ray who passed it over the seat while Winston turned away in expectation. Venkman activated it, turned it toward the girl, watched it go berserk before a charge shocked his hand and he dropped it, smoking, to the floor of the vehicle where it expired.

Egon tried to see what was happening in the rear-view mirror. "You didn't-"

"No," Pete said indignantly. "Just wanted to see it." He stared worriedly at the girl who stared back until she grew bored with him. He offered his hand. "Hi there. Pete Venkman."

Her own small hand was unnaturally cool and smooth to the touch. "Hi."

"So, do you live around here?"

She nodded.

"What's your last name?"

"Just 'manda."

"Just Manda, huh? What're you, some kinda diva like Britney or Cher?"

"Britney…share?"

Peter's brows lifted and he performed a tight smile for her. "Are you just like all the other teenaged girls running around New York? Forever glued to your cell phone, crazy about Justin Bieber, wishing you were on Glee?"

She eyed him strangely.

He inhaled deeply. "Have the guys here introduced you to any of our fun testing apparati?"

"Janine threatened us with paperwork," grumbled Ray.

He looked at his watch. "And she gets off in just over an hour…so…let's see what kind of trouble we can stir up in the meantime." He smiled at Amanda and patted her arm. She smiled back while he withdrew his fingers and worked them like he'd just touched something strange.


	8. Chapter 8

8

They settled on Mediterranean food, crowding into a tiny café squeezed into a crevasse that had once been an alleyway and now served inexpensive falafel and salad platters. Egon stared at the teen contemplatively. Ray seemed simultaneously charmed by her and wary of her. Winston had reluctantly taken on a protective role, and Peter trusted her about as far as he could throw his proton pack. She was disinclined to partake of the meal, but when Ray and Winston offered her morsels she consumed them rapidly and without comment. Egon filled Peter in on the details while savoring an overstuffed, dripping, beef and lamb gyro.

When they figured they'd killed enough time they returned to the firehouse in time to see Janine drive off in her Volkswagen. Winston didn't like the idea of trying anything invasive on her lest something go wrong and her parents showed up with their lawyer in tow, so they decided to start her with Zener cards while Ray assembled his aura analyzing equipment so they could see what sort of energy she radiated.

Egon was seated across from her at the break room table, holding up a card when Winston arrived breathless to report, "The containment unit is empty."

Spengler's face went blank for a second, and then he smiled indulgently. "Ha ha, Winston."

"I'm serious."

"Clearly the readings are off. Recalibrate-"

"I already grabbed Ray and he's rechecking everything right now."

The scientist's brow furrowed. "But a mass containment breach would cause a rift of-"

"There's no evidence of a breach," Winston assured him. "Not that we could determine."

Egon glanced at Amanda. "Excuse me," he said, rising from the table to hurry past his colleague.

The guys spent forty minutes calibrating, adjusting, and running self-checks on the huge, ghost storage unit in the basement. Everything checked out—all systems were functioning within normal parameters and there had been no breaches, no venting, no power failures, no nothing. They didn't like what they were seeing and broke out what still functioned of their ghost-detecting equipment to sweep the entire premises.

"Y'know," Peter finally mentioned, "I haven't seen any evidence of the giant flying booger, either."

"Slimer?" asked Ray from behind a huge pair of spectre-detecting goggles.

"No, Janine."

Egon mentioned, "It would seem…as though every self-respecting spirit in the vicinity has fled elsewhere."

"Or gone into hiding," suggested Zeddemore.

"Which indicates something very big and powerful may be on its way," continued Ray.

"Or," added Peter, hoisting an index finger skyward, "that it's already here…."

The four looked skeptically at each other, their doubt melting into worry.

"Where did you say you found her again?" Pete asked Ray.


	9. Chapter 9

9

Paperwork be damned, they threw everything they had at her. In photos they noticed an odd shimmer or blur behind Amanda that was barely discernable to the naked eye. The camera specially designed to capture auras showed only a prismatic blur. Ray's goggles picked up the faint shadow or whatever it was that seemed to outline or follow her. Her image beneath the electrode-bearing helmet showed only a normal, living, human female…but the normally intense colors were faded as though the signal they transmitted was weak. The EMF meter was all over the board, so all they learned from it was that the girl existed but seemed electromagnetically unstable. Likewise, the ion meter was unable to settle on a simple average reading in her presence.

Finally Egon returned to the Zener cards. The deck featured five each of five designs, simple black line depictions on a pristine white field: a five-pointed star, a plus sign or equal-armed cross, a square, a circle, and a set of three wavy lines side by side that Ray like to think of as water and Peter referred to as bacon.

Dr. Spengler had already explained to her how he would set the top card from the deck facedown between them, and then she should tell him what she thought it showed either by guess or through concentration.

He sat expectantly across from her, a notepad balanced on his thigh beyond her sight, a pen at the ready. She stared at the card for a while, glanced up into his eyes and smiled shyly, then furrowed her brow as she considered. Finally she told him softly, "Butterfly."

Egon's mouth twisted to one side. He wanted to explain to her that butterflies were not one of the choices, but decided to see what she had identified as such anyway. Perhaps it was the star or the plus sign…. He reached forward, lifted the card and stared at it. His features fell. He turned the card for a look at the back, to make certain it had come from the same deck. When Amanda glimpsed the line drawing of a butterfly on it, she clapped her hands with pleasure. Frowning, the man lifted the remainder of the deck and fanned it in his large, long-fingered hands, reassuring himself that each depicted a star, a square, a plus, a circle, or bacon. Watching his subject, he shuffled anew and pulled the top card to place neatly between them.

Amanda leaned forward over her crossed arms, bright-eyed and smiley at the game she thought they were playing. "Car," she announced.

Egon's thick brows knitted. He lifted the edge of the card for a peek underneath. There was a neat line drawing of a Passat on it. He let his gaze slide to the side, then withdrew the card from the table and set it to the side. When she correctly identified the next one as a kitten, he studied the deck again. They remained Zener cards…aside from the butterfly, the car and the kitten.

Raymond had been observing from behind Egon, leaning against a counter. He sauntered forward, drew a card and glanced at it quickly. He asked, "What is it?"

"Bologna," she said, grinning with mirth.

"Ah-ha!" he exclaimed. "Wrong!" Then dropped the sandwich he was holding instead of a card.

Peter's jaw dropped and Winston looked like he thought it high time he armed himself with a proton pack—just in case.

Ray toed the sandwich. The white bread parted, revealing a smear of mayo on the sliced meat.

"What is she?" Peter asked breathlessly. "Is she…is she a genie?"

Egon fixed him with a dubious stare.

He shrugged. "Just askin'."

Ray stepped around the sandwich to approach the table. "If I said I wanted…split hooves and goat's horns-"

"No, no, no, no, no!" cried Peter, chuckling uneasily. "Amanda, if I said I wanted to party with fifty Playboy bunnies-"

"Peter," interrupted Egon, shaking his head.

"Where's the harm in that?"

"The harm is that there are too many stories where things like that go horribly wrong somehow."

"Like _The Monkey's Paw_," said Ray.

Said Pete, "I wasn't gonna ask her for a monkey's paw."

"I think I remember an incident…many years ago…where this little boy…he could, like, do anything he wanted, and he made his family watch the same TV shows over and over and if he got mad, he'd banish you to a nearby cornfield. Forever."

Winston scowled. "Ray, that's an episode of _The Twilight Zone_."

Peter clapped his hands, capturing everyone's attention, then rubbed them together briskly as he neared the girl. "Can you make all the PKE meters work again?"

The teen looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged and nodded. Egon blinked and Ray shrugged while Winston went to retrieve one. He returned with all of them and they worked fine…until Ray pointed one in the girl's direction. He sighed. Peter snatched it from him and pointed it in the opposite direction. "Let me turn it off. Then I'll just turn it back on again," he said slowly and pointedly. It worked just as he'd hoped it would.

"Intriguing," murmured Spengler. Louder, he asked, "What are you?"

The girl shrugged. "Quasar."

"Quasar?" echoed Stantz.

Winston asked, "Isn't that some kind of a space anomaly?"

Wondered Ray, "Maybe it's a military code word or designation." He bent toward the girl. "Are you the property of or work with or for the United States government or that of any other country?"

Peter swooped in to squeeze her shoulders between his hands and laughed. "Right now she belongs to _us!_"

Egon said, "I wonder…what she has to do with the containment unit?"

"You want her to refill it?"

"No, Peter. But…perhaps if she could restore things to the way they were before…."

"Monkey paw," warned Winston.

"Aw, C'mon, guys! You find me a new toy and then you won't even let me play with it!"

"Especially you," Egon mentioned to Peter, who rolled his eyes.

Ray's eyes went wide. "Guys. Do you hear that?"

They all froze, listening.

"Phone!" he said, scampering off to answer it.

Said Winston, "What if she has nothing to do with the containment unit?"

"Oh, we don't need that," Peter gushed, bending to give the girl a more affectionate squeeze. "We have Amanda now!"

"But what if she _is _somebody's property? What if they're looking for her right now?"

"Then we make our wishes fast before they come for her."

"I believe more testing is in order before-"

"Egon, if we didn't keep preventing you from testing everything, you'd have starved to death years ago."

"That was just a phase," the tall, bespectacled man muttered.

"I think we should find out where she belongs and get her back there," Winston said. "Then we'll deal with whatever other strange phenomena is going on here."

Egon said, "I suspect her presence is linked to the containment unit…and probably also the fact that we weren't able to detect anything out of the ordinary at that apartment building earlier."

Pete stood, one hand roughly massaging the girl's right trapezius muscle. "So…you think…she's like ghost repellent?"

The four were silent while that sank in.

Finally, Egon said, "I sometimes imagine what it might be like to return to a university setting."

Winston grumbled, "Guess I could always go back to construction work."

Peter hugged the girl from behind. "And we could be a hit on late-night TV!"

Before anyone could protest, Ray yelled, "Got one, guys, and it sounds like a big deal!"

Peter asked, "Ghost repellent?"

"While I'd love the chance to experiment further," Egon told him, "I think for now we should take care of the jobs that we're paid for."

"Amen," concluded Winston.

"But, we're bringing her, right? We are, aren't we?"


	10. Chapter 10

10

In the 1700's a church had occupied the site, but a fire had scoured the earth sometime later and eventually a tavern had occupied the approximate spot. For over a hundred years there had been tales of minor alleged incidences mostly attributed to the consumption of alcohol until the 1960's when a group of students interested in spiritualism began experimenting with table-tapping and achieved some interesting, though not exactly definitive results. There was an old story about a barmaid who'd tried to conceal a pregnancy and died in childbirth in an upstairs room. Others were familiar with the story of a quiet man not known for his brilliant wit who'd been crushed by a stack of champagne barrels that had been stacked poorly before a New Year's Eve party. There was even the tale of the traveler who'd drunk more than his fill by the fire on a cold, rainy night and found himself unable to pay. He was kicked out after a minor altercation and hailed a cab right outside the entrance. The driver was reported to've been grey-green of coloration with a hollow, uncomprehending stare, his team starved to near skeletons hitched to rotted timber by decaying leather. The drunkard had climbed aboard and demanded to be taken all the way to the Pine Barrows—an unlikely destination on such a night, only to be found the next morning stiff and cold in the local cemetery, revived enough to tell his story before shuffling off his mortal coil.

Truth be told, the area had been a hotspot for paranormal activity long before that with proto-Indians avoiding it like plague and later tribes discerning that game would make grand efforts to go around it even when pursued, and neither horse nor hound would remain by any campsites over night. Now and then pretty, strange, glowing, colored "fogs" were known to engulf the area and travelers seeking a shortcut through it often discovered themselves miles off course by the time they'd regained their bearings. Dead man's lanterns beckoned the unwary toward the steep edges of the Hudson River. Stones were sometimes found stacked precariously for no reason at the edges of the recognized area. In an effort to dispel the silly stories of savage pagans, early settlers had erected a rather small and claptrap chapel in the approximate center of the site. Rather than convert the natives, the tribes had sensibly deduced the Europeans were not terribly bright and migrated to more remote areas instead.

Sometime during the late-1600s the surrounding area had fallen plague to a bizarre thumping or pounding noise that managed to rattle glassware from shelves and keep babies up at night. It went on day and night until an official church was raised, and for nearly half a century life was good in the area, crops were plentiful, game returned to the land, and the settlers thrived.

The fire came about when a rector's niece thought it might be fun to try and hold a séance in the church on All Saint's Evening. She'd thought to conceal lantern-light with heavy drapes, forgetting how hot they'd get until the whole building was in flames. It wasn't just the church that went; flames spread into a birch grove at one corner of the building, and flaming branches fell and rolled toward her uncle's abode. A burning horse escaped his barn and fled into the remains of a gleaned cornfield. By the time the sun rose again, it shone down on quite a nice stretch of scorched earth.

A better building was built closer to the center of town and the land lay vacant, the ruins abandoned until a relative from the Old World arrived to inherit and saw its commercial value. Thus the tavern had arisen and done well for several generations despite the growing trend of ghost stories connected with it. Because no one could prove anyone had ever actually been hurt or died at the spot, the haunting was treated as a gimmick to draw in the adventurous sort—particularly around All Hallows.

But six years ago a small New Age shop rented out one of the nearby structures, and late at night, several times a year, small groups or covens gathered to celebrate successful endeavors and encourage hope for oncoming seasonal markers. When the owner passed away, her son who was business savvy though not especially spiritual-minded decided to keep the place running for a lark. He hired an all-new staff who quickly dismissed the former coven and found a group willing to pay more for use of the location on specific nights. Two of his employees were friends of members of the new group. Under their guidance, the friendly, quirky, shop full of herbs and oils and books that celebrated life, healing, and nature soon sold tobacco blends, tinctures and remedies they blended themselves in the back, death metal, creepy statuary, pickled small animals and the parts of larger creatures, and subleted space to a guy who specialized in black light jewelry piercing and crappy, satanic-themed tattoos performed by his underaged nephew.

Normally, a place such as that might have well flourished despite turning off the clientele of the shop's previous incarnation. Under other circumstances, even a Walmart located in that general area might have successfully provoked whatever malevolent energies lurked about and caused the paranormal riot that finally burst like an over-ripe pimple, but whatever straw it was that broke that particular camel's back, it built momentum slowly until even long-time locals used to bizarre happenings in the area recognized the need for something drastic and started calling the constabulary to demand that some semblance of peace be restored.

Now police and other emergency responders are likely to first be skeptical, and then, if pressed, to seek more logical explanations to what hysterical citizens might be calling paranormal activity. Ambulances were sent out, fire trucks when the calls grew too numerous, and the town's tiny police force was stretched to its limits trying to deduce what all the uproar was about. One ambulance got into a race with what appeared to be an occupantless hearse. Two fire rescue teams tried to locate an address that they'd been to before, but for some odd reason could no longer locate. A police cruiser driving slowly down an elm-lined street hit a fire hydrant when what appeared to be a flaming corpse dropped from the sky and landed on the windshield (it was later determined to have been nothing but a scarecrow…a scarecrow far from local fields…and engulfed in flame with a noose about its neck). The Chief was called. He was unhappy. He drove into city limits to find frightening jagged cracks coursing along Main Street, shops closed for the evening blinking with colored lights from unknown sources, mailboxes uprooted and littering sidewalks, trees cracked and threatening collapse, stray dogs yelping and fleeing with tails tucked between their legs, and a halo of pretty, undulating colors highlighting the location of the oldest local bar.

The Chief called the Mayor. The Mayor accused him of drunken tomfoolery until the covers were yanked abruptly off his bed and cast through a closed window while he and his wife froze in terror and their aged Boston terrier finally managed to scratch his way free through a solid wood door and out into the street.

But meanwhile, back at Ghostbusters Headquarters, Winston had discovered that Amanda would stay still in front of the television, and so he'd discovered a channel featuring a marathon of bad 80s movies and popped a bag of corn he left beside some Dr. Pepper he'd thoughtfully poured over ice for her. Then, propping himself up comfortably in an oversized recliner with his laptop, he listened to some of his favorite tunes through a single earbud while trying to research clues regarding the teen, what she might be, and where she might be from. The work was tedious and he found himself having difficulty concentrating in part because he liked some of the films that came on and enjoyed re-watching especially exciting scenes, and also because despite the trust in his level-headedness that his co-workers had expressed in him before departing (two of the three anyway), he couldn't stop thinking of all the cool things he wanted or could do if Amanda proved to be a genie and was just waiting to grant each of them wishes.

Frustrated with a lack of hits, he eventually looked up the area his colleagues had been called to, seeking historic value to the claims of hauntings thereabouts. "Local tribes called it Land Of Forest Sickness and Poison-soul. Poison-soul? Wow. Could that be any more ominous?"

Amanda ignored him, eyes glassy, her mind millions of miles away.

He looked longingly at the untouched popcorn, shook his head and continued. "Let's see, here's something about a fire…and a séance. In a church? That's messed up. Colored lights and fog…well, it is next to a river. Several haunted houses reported in the area…." He clicked on a list from a site that specialized in trying to promote allegedly haunted real estate, and then dumped out to return to where he'd been. "Okay, here we go…a three-hundred year old farmhouse…old man walks around at night…floors squeak, doors slowly close and open…well, that could be anything," he decided. "Okay, here it says there was a circus that set up in the area back in the fifties, and none of the animals would go anywhere near this one specific small plot of ground…and then a giraffe keeled over dead for no reason whatsoever and its head landed in the precise center of the spot. Huh. Wonder what's buried there?"

Amanda looked like someone in a vegetative state. Curious, he lifted the remote and changed channels. A man hopped about clapping his hands in a dress shirt sans tie, trying to promote the health benefits of a liquid diet. Zeddemore watched her. She failed to register she was watching something different. He changed channels again. A handsome, grandfatherly type was speaking to a rapt audience about God's Word, one hand raised like he was trying to halt traffic. Nothing. The next channel was a commercial in Spanish. He turned the TV off. After a moment or two the girl blinked and smiled, turning her head his way. "You okay?"

"'m okay," she replied, nodding.

"There's popcorn and soda."

She noticed it. "Oh, thank you.'

He inhaled sharply. "Wow."

She took the room-temperature bag in her lap and crunched away.

"You wanna watch TV?"

She shrugged. "'kay."

He sighed and flipped around until he found a PBS station. If she was going to act like she was hypnotized, at least he could try and get something educational to saturate her brain.

He continued his research. "Okay…whoa. That's scary…there was an old mansion back in the 30's that was turned into a finishing school for girls. The fishpond on site was found drained one day and all the fish in it appeared well rotted. Small fires erupting in unoccupied parts of the house…terrible smells manifesting in the middle of the night…'course that happens here, too, on burrito night." He glanced over toward the girl. She was mesmerized by the mating habits of purple martins, popcorn spilled across her lap.

He was considering breaking out one of their gaming systems to see if she'd care to challenge him when he heard his cell start playing a Willie Hutch tune. The phone identified the caller as Egon.


	11. Chapter 11

11

With all of the equipment working, the guys should have ideally been able to get some idea of what they were dealing with and begun a sensible plan to subdue it. They didn't always bust ghosts: understanding what was causing a phenomenon and then seeking to rectify it was a better way to handle some situations. Not all ghosts, demons, or other spirit-types required imprisonment in the containment unit or getting blasted with protons into another dimension.

They had seen entire communities beset with strange occurrences before, but it was alarming to see people fleeing a town en masse. A glow they'd attributed to a nearby small airstrip proved to be emanating high above the town, undulating with ghostly ribbons of transparent color like a miniature, localized aurora borealis. Egon took a reading and mentioned, "It's producing an astonishing amount of electromagnetic radiation."

From the driver's seat, Pete asked, "Does that mean we're all gonna get cancer?"

His co-workers ignored him.

Ray pondered a PKE meter. "Readings are all over the board. Whatever's happening is affecting things across a broad spectrum. I wouldn't be surprised if we ran into everything from cold breezes all the way up through The Rapture."

Pete made a face of incredulity. No one commented.

Then they drove into a stink that made them retch and gag. "I think I accidentally drove to Jersey," said Pete, trying not to breathe. Nobody found his attempt at humor funny.

The stench vanished and the outside temperature dropped so abruptly that the windshield began to fog. Ray asked, "Is it gone, or are we just used to breathing it?"

Mentioned Egon, "Some poisonous gases are only detectable for the first few inhalations."

"That's reassuring," Pete told him, playing with the climate controls in an effort to see.

The big old converted ambulance sputtered and died, but kept coasting as the headlights dimmed. The guys grunted when the proton packs in the back clicked into life. They all turned in their seats as the devices began to make strange sounds. Ray unbuckled himself and reached for the nearest one, yanking his hand away in pain as the scent of singed flesh stung their nostrils. "I can't turn 'em off!" he called over the alarming racket. He turned the PKE meter around and tried to whack at the emergency dump button of one with the blunt handle. "They're going critical!" he shouted, and three doors flew open so three Ghostbusters could evacuate. The slowing vehicle continued to roll several yards before coming to a stop, crazy lights and sounds emanating from the interior. No one had been hurt in the exodus, but they immediately sought cover or lay on the ground covering their ears, eyes closed, waiting for the explosion.

"I don't like this," Venkman decided, tired of waiting for an explosion that never happened. The Ecto-1 was silent and dark, still where the front right tire had come to rest against a curb. He peeked through the windows, pulled open a door and sighed. "I think it's safe now."

The horn honked and he went airborne, landing hard on asphalt with his fingers laced behind his head. After a moment his cohorts started laughing and he sighed again, dropping his forehead forward.

"The activity seems isolated, but unless it's surrounded by ley lines, I can't imagine there's an entity or energy pattern that insists on existing solely within lines drawn on a map."

Dr. Spengler squinted at Ray while he helped Peter to his feet. "Boundaries could also indicate there are wards in place, spells designed to entrap something within a specific area."

"Or that act as a gateway," Ray added.

"Okay," Pete said, dusting himself off, "we've been through this before. You can sit and analyze the crap outta anything for weeks, or we can cut straight to the heart of the matter and see if we can't shut this thing down now."

"Let's go," agreed Dr. Stantz, staring at his PKE meter as he started hoofing it toward the center of town. Spengler followed until they heard a car engine turn over, and then Peter was cruising up alongside them with the window rolled down. "You boys goin' my way?"

Streetlights flickered, hydrants burst and water gushed out hundreds of gallons a minute. A couple of animated vehicles cruised by, doing nothing dangerous aside from running stoplights and stop signs. "Those cars have ghostly drivers," announced Ray. "Low-level, not very powerful, easy to dispense with."

"Do we get 'em?" Dr. Venkman asked.

"That could take all night," Spengler noted as a riderless bicycle rolled by.

In the center of town electronic alarms shattered the night, every store's security system registering break-ins and fires that weren't actually occurring. They hoped they wouldn't have to stop there. They'd have to wear earplugs just to keep their sanity.

Farther they rode and the Ecto-1's radio came on and wouldn't stop riding the dial. Pete mentioned, "This is the most annoying haunting I've ever seen."

A few hapless police officers and civil servants in reflective vests could be seen running about. They didn't try to stop anyone to find out more about what was going on. Thick fog billowed from around the edges of manholes they rode over until they finally all popped simultaneously, heavy iron discs soaring through the air and landing with sidewalk-cracking force all around them.

"We have to go on foot," Ray said reluctantly.

They were hesitant to grab their packs, but the units were cool to the touch and powered up as expected on the first try. They grabbed flashlights when Egon warned about falling into dark, open manholes, but their flashlights flickered and dimmed in such a manner that they were nearly useless.

There was a large gathering ahead of them, moving slowly from a side street, silhouettes in patchy fog.

"Hello, citizens!" Ray shouted, waving a hand enthusiastically. "We are the Ghostbusters and we're here to restore your way of life and your peace of mind!"

Pete cocked an eyebrow at him. "Where did that come from?"

"I think it was a commercial for some kind of insurance I saw on late-night TV."

"Watch your step!" Egon warned them. "Open manholes in the street! You might want to remain up on the sidewalks!" They moved toward the pack, ready to ask the first person they encountered if they could give them any details or perhaps help them determine the actual source of the manifestations.

The group began to pick up steam. "I think they're running from something," Peter said unhappily.

Ray stopped.

"Run," Venkman insisted loudly. "Run, Ray, _run!_"

Peter turned tail and fled back toward the car. Ray remained in place, certain the crowd would part around them and he could perhaps be the first one to throw a stream at whatever was chasing everybody. Egon sidestepped into a narrow alleyway.

The crowd surged upon them. They made terrible rough, gasping, cracking, breaking noises, farting sounds, wheezes, squeals and rattling whistles. A miasma preceded them. Certain it was they he should be running from, Dr. Venkman hightailed it for the Ecto-1 and dove within, scrambling over seats to lock all of the doors.

The first few people hurried past Dr. Stantz as he tried not to inhale the sweet-earthy stench of rot. His nostrils flared and his eyelids twitched and acid rose in his throat, choking him. Turning away, he coughed and gagged, vomiting bile. Someone ran into him and fell. He staggered from the impact and tried to reach for the person's arm to help him or her, only to have the limb produce a sickening wet pop before it slid free of a tattered, stained sleeve that turned to ribbons. The arm he grasped was skinny with a texture like beef jerky. As if caught in a dream, he turned the loose limb to examine it, and the skeletal hand caught his sleeve and held tight like a pit bull. He uttered an involuntary cry of fear, and suddenly there were more colliding with him, clawing at him, bits and pieces of them breaking free in the melee. Hair fell across his face like a spider-web and he started to thrash and swing the wand end of his pack wildly, freeing chunks from his attackers. They overwhelmed him quickly, squirming and making their terrible dry, squeaky noises, their bones clattering and clacking like tree limbs whipped by a bad storm, and behind them followed a tsunami of rats.

The first few runners passed the big car, and Pete watched one of the panicked idiots drop out of sight into a manhole. It proved shallow, however, but the thing that crawled out presented a different silhouette, broken and missing a part or two from the initial fall. Nothing slowed it down, however, and the scientist pressed his face to the glass of the nearest window to squint out into the night. "No way," he gasped softly. "This isn't real." As more of the things emerged from the fog, some ran into the vehicle and decided the best way around it was over it. Pete jerked back into a seat when a rotted head gaped at him through the glass. It lacked eyes and ears and had a hole where the nose should have been. The bones were dark and rough-textured with what he assumed must be the remains of rotted flesh. The smell began to seep into the car and he moaned, struggling to start it and do something with the air controls. His activity seemed to attract the things and more and more surrounded him, crawling on and rocking the Cadillac. Pete waved the business end of his wand back and forth between what were mostly still faces knowing that it was in his best interest to wait until they had actually managed to break into the car.

Dr. Spengler stood with his back to a Dumpster, his pack switched off, silent as shadow. He saw the re-animated corpses smother Ray and watched more become a large mound where the car had been. He dared not fire into the groups for fear of hitting his colleagues. Unlike Peter who often imagined the worse and Ray who's imagination sometimes ran away with him, Egon had no preconceived notion that they were dealing with Hollywood-type zombies who would of course tear their victims to pieces and/or transform them into fresh zombies. He knew by the smell, by their gates, the terrible noises they made, and the few who managed to actually pass very close to where he remained hidden that they were undoubtedly dead bodies made re-animate. He squatted to poke at something a couple of them had trailed in passing and found it to be rich soil. Deeper within the alley was a slightly wider area encompassed by two and three-story buildings, all of which featured locked doors. He backed slowly away until he was certain that shadows concealed him, and then turned and hurried for a fire escape. With a leap, he managed to grab the bottom of the steps that would normally drop to allow people to escape from upper floors to the safety of the asphalt below. It remained in place, so he walked it hand over hand, feet dangling until he was able to work one boot up against a slight ledge created by a window frame that indicated where there had once been glass in what was now a solid brick wall. He used the leverage to help maintain his position as he reached for a better grip, finally attaining it and pulling himself onto the second-story level. He was just in time, for below him stood a little girl in a stained and frayed-edged dress watching him through pale, clouded eyes. He exhaled loudly as he watched her, trying to catch his breath. Another figure wandered into the alley, and he decided it was time to try an experiment. When he powered up his pack, the lights and sound attracted a few more visitors. The girl had wandered just beneath him, still staring upward. He was relieved it seemed unlikely they'd be able to get to him. Lowering himself to one knee for a better shot, he sighted in the little girl and let loose with a wavering, near-blinding beam of whoop-ass. She flew backward from the blow and writhed, hoarsely exhaling what should have been screams, what was left of her flesh crisping away into wisps of airborne soot, her skeleton glowing a freaky mottled red-orange like dying embers before shattering onto the asphalt. He powered down. Nothing but a god-awful smell and a few wisps of smoke remained. Whatever had been animating her had not been an actual spirit. Drawing hope from the experiment, he stood and let his gaze wander farther up the alley. The size of the crowd was astonishing. He speed-dialed Winston and dropped the phone back into his pocket before lighting up his guests.


	12. Chapter 12

12

No one spoke when he listened, and though the sounds he heard were muted, Winston recognized them as an unstable proton stream whipping back and forth. He waited, eyes large, holding his breath. Had he just been butt-dialed, or had Spengler meant to contact him? As he listened, he detected the tell-sign sound of the device losing power. Were they battling something so large or so numerous that it was actually draining their weapons so fast? The sound ceased and he yelled, "Egon! Egon!" uncertain if he could be heard or not.

"Z! Can't talk now. Big trouble! If you can hear me, we need you now!"

Swallowing, the large guy ended the call and leaped up, his laptop crashing to the floor. He looked at Amanda. "I've got to get to Egon!"

Darkness overcame him and he heard a cry of terror before blinding light surged at him. A silhouette eclipsed it, and just past its shoulder he could see Dr. Spengler cowering in astonishment, mouth agape. Amanda took two steps nearer the proton thrower and reached to turn it off. Egon's glasses fogged. He remained crouched, breathing hard, unable to believe what he had just seen. Uncertain his brain had fully processed what he'd just witnessed, Winston stepped closer and bent over her shoulder to say, "You called?"

"You were _how_ did she get here _did you see that_, Winston?!"

"I don't know," said Z, turning to find they were on the lowest level of a fire escape. He rested his hands on the safety rail and looked out across layers of charred bodies and collapsing ones. "What's going on?"

"Re-animated corpses," Egon gasped, clawing his way along the bricks behind him until he could stand upright again. "I can't understand what just happened-"

"Me, either…but I can guess," Winston said, resting a hand on the teen's shoulder.

Corpses dropped like dominos, beginning within the alley and making their way outward. The girl shuddered.

"What is your hypothesis?"

"My what?"

"About what happened?" pressed the pale man polishing his glasses with a micro fiber cloth.

"Just now?"

"Just now."

"I was sitting in a chair back at the fire hall and then I was here. Wait…I think I actually said something like Egon needs me, or I've got to get to Egon. Did I use up one of my wishes?"

"I think it's only a wish if you mention the word wish or say it like a command."

Winston shook his head as he looked at the sleeves of the jumpsuit he now wore. "I had no idea this would get me here. Or, it did. It wasn't intentional."

"And?"

"And…I take it they're not here filming another _Night Of The Living Dead_ movie?"

"But, the positronic stream…."

Winston looked at his co-worker worriedly. "Yeah. You almost baked her."

Egon said, "I was. I did. She was right in its path and it either had absolutely no effect on her…or she absorbed it."

"It probably had no effect," Winston decided.

"That would be the easiest explanation to swallow."

"Where's the rest of the party?"

Egon pointed. "Ray's over there and Peter's over there somewhere."

It was dark. Winston squinted. "Where?"

"Under piles of zombies."

"Zombies? Haitian or New Orleans style?"

Egon coughed as the bitter dry stench of charred flesh wafted their way. "Extra crispy."

From the distance they suddenly heard a slightly muffled, "I'm okay!" they both recognized as Raymond's voice.

"That's one," said Winston. "How do we get down from here?"

"We…jump…." Egon said, looking down at the remains he stood in. He lifted his gaze to the walls of the brick box canyon, turned to see the fire escape just above and behind them.

"Was that another wish?" Asked Z.

Egon rested a hand on the girl's shoulder. "We need to find Peter, make certain he's all right."

"GAH!" yelped Venkman, falling backward into a pile of rotting debris. "EEYAH!" he floundered a moment until he realized he was on solid ground and no one was attacking him. Rising unsteadily, he beat at his befouled jumpsuit in disgust. "Don't they ever clean this place?"

Winston laughed and even Egon chuckled with relief and delight. "Ray?" called Egon expectantly.

"Here!" called Stantz, picking his way into the mouth of the alley. "Jeeze, what a mess! Boy is Sanitation gonna be unhappy in the morning!"

Peter asked them "Where did you guys come from?"

"I didn't," said Egon. "You did."

"I did what?"

"And him, too," Spengler added, gesturing toward Winston.

"What?"

"Winston?" called Ray as he drew nearer. "When did you get here?"

"Literally like two seconds ago."

"A hundred and forty-three seconds ago," corrected Spengler.

Dr. Stantz looked down at the girl. "I bet…she's why they stopped attacking." His skin was covered with scrapes and filth, his uniform streaked and stained. "Do you hear that?"

Winston could hear distant sirens. "Police? Fire trucks?"

"All the shop alarms are off. C'mon, guys!" He hopped and kicked his way through the remains of former citizens, the other three following suit, unaware that their newest companion had levitated over the pileup and was floating along in their wake.

Out on the street they could see that streetlights were back on and storefronts were dark and quiet. The pretty light show overhead had vanished, and for the most part everything seemed back to normal. From the distance they heard occasional shouts that sounded like questions and some that sounded like replies. The air temperature returned to normal and stars could be seen glistening above them.

"Y'know, this isn't such a bad little place," mentioned Ray.

Peter staggered by, trying to kick free a length of something rotted that clung to his boot.

Spengler swept the area with his PKE meter. It conked out when it neared Amanda. He sighed. "I think she sucks energy."

"She what?" Pete asked.

"I think she attracts energy…like a black hole. Different kinds of energy."

"Spirit energy," whispered Ray.

"Black hole?" asked Pete.

"Do you think she can reach critical overload?" Winston queried.

Egon knelt to take hold of her arms and look her in the eye. "Do you store energy like a battery, or do you send it elsewhere like a portal?"

Peter asked, "What are you talking about, Egon?"

Spengler stood and powered up his proton pack. The others moved to stop him, but turned away at the last second when he struck her full-force with everything he had.

Amanda gazed down at the stream of rippling light and glowing energy, her face awash in vivid color. She calmly reached toward the beam with a forefinger and it seemed attracted to the digit, allowing her to trace designs in the air while Egon remained still. He finally powered it down and stood watching the teen turn around, seeking the light she'd been playing with.

"Ray?"

"Me?" asked Ray, stepping forward. "I've got nothing."

"Peter?"

"We're gonna be rich!"

Egon merely cut his eyes Winston's way and the man shrugged in return.


	13. Chapter 13

13

They made it back to the Ectomobile without comment, each lost in ideas. They were just leaving the downtown area when a police car pulled up and flashed its colored lights. "It may be Morse code," Pete suggested, reaching for the row of switches mounted beneath the dashboard. "I'll flash back." Instead he rolled down the window and grinned. "Top o' the mornin' to ya, Officer! Fine day for a drive, am I right?"

"Where are you going?" the cop asked.

"Home. We'll send the bill Certified Mail. You'll have to sign for it."

"I mean, you're not finished are you?"

"You need to hire a different contractor for clean-up jobs," Ray said, leaning toward Pete.

The man chuckled, but didn't actually sound very amused. "But you never even went near O'Gill's."

"O'Gill's?" Venkman repeated, looking at his companions, then turning back to the police officer. "What are O'Gill's?"

The man pointed. "The local pub. The most haunted spot in this place."

"Is it zombie happy hour?" asked Pete.

"Are you jokers really the Ghostbusters?" he asked, bending in an effort to try and see deeper within their vehicle.

"Very," Pete told him. "Okay, so where's this O'Gill's?"

The police officer offered to escort them. "Fancy," Peter mentioned, waiting for him to get back in his squad car and lead the way. "Okay, so run this all by me again? Is she a genie or not, 'cause I was thinkin' 'bout all the stuff I wanted on the drive over here."

"If she's a genie as you say, then it seems likely she's able to convert the energy she collects into matter." Egon told him.

"Matter?"

"Bologna sandwiches," Ray supplied.

"You didn't eat it, did you?"

Ray turned away, looking guilty. Winston, seated behind him, made a face of revulsion. "Man, that thing was on the floor!"

"That thing," Egon corrected, "was a Zener card."

"Oh, that'll make potty time interesting later," said Pete. "Do you think you'll be pooping a star, a circle, a plus sign-"

"Peter," grunted Egon, silencing the smirking man. He whispered to Ray, "Write down your guess. We'll see if you're right later."

Winston winced.

They rode past a cemetery that looked like someone had been detonating land mines in it.

"So, she sort of _is _like a genie," Pete prompted.

"That has not been ascertained."

"Say, dunno, Egon, okay? Just shrug and say dunno."

"But…how does she…_ignore _time and space?" asked Winston.

"I really wish we could test her further," Dr. Spengler sighed.

"I could really go for a taco," Venkman announced. "A mahi mahi taco with extra guac." He chuckled and held one aloft. "I _love _this kid!"

Egon plucked it from his hand, removed a plastic bag from a pocket of his jumpsuit and sealed it within. "I'll deal with that later."

"Spoilsport," grumbled Pete.

The police officer pulled up beside a music store, exited his vehicle, and pointed farther up the street. Beneath a swinging sign that said O'Gill's and featured a cartoonish leprechaun with a bemused countenance and a large mug oozing foam stood the entranceway to a freestanding structure that looked dark and foreboding nestled within a horseshoe of surrounding businesses. Winston activated a PKE meter and was careful not to get it near Amanda. "Ray," he asked. "Would you take a look at this?"

"This is the likely source of the activity," the other man confirmed. "The readings seem to indicate a very strong entity…maybe a very strong demon or minor demi-god."

"No," Pete whispered, lowering his forehead into one palm.

Ray asked, "What do think…?" and gestured at the teenager.

Egon touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip. "I don't know."

"This could be quick and painless, or…."

"Don't say _quick and painless_ and then say _or_ and let the sentence trail off," Venkman grumbled.

"Take her? Leave her?"

"What if it's more powerful than she is and it somehow gets hold of her?" Zeddemore asked.

"Not the analyzing again. You wanna go in the bar, kid?" Peter asked her.

"'kay."

"Might be big, bad boogeymen in there."

"Hm," she said.

"Are you actually afraid of anything?"

She shrugged. "No."

"Guys?" he asked.

Egon shook his head. Ray looked like he had something to say but was afraid to say it. Winston opened the car door and stepped out to inhale cool, sweet air.

"Me, too," Venkman said, exiting the driver's side.

Ray looked pained. Egon closed his eyes.


	14. Chapter 14

14

The door was locked, and rather than break in, the guys walked around the exterior until they found a rear door that had been damaged enough to allow entry. "It was jimmied from the outside," noted Egon. "No alarm system, or someone knew how to deactivate it."

"Don't you think if they knew how to deactivate it, they'd have had a key to get in with, Egon?"

Spengler looked at Venkman and shrugged airily.

"Why was the bar closed?" Zeddemore wanted to know as they slowly entered past stacked cardboard boxes bearing the names of popular carbonated beverages, juices, and alcoholic spirits. "I mean, blizzards, hurricanes, earthquakes…you can always find a bar that's open."

Egon mentioned as he scanned ahead of them, "I wouldn't exactly categorize this as an act of God."

Pete muttered, "Good point."

The small area they'd first entered became a much larger space that ran left and right. The place was dark for the most part, though a strange, cold, bluish-grey glow emanated from what they figured must be the bar area. "Split up," Egon said, gesturing for Ray and Peter to go right while he and Winston moved left.

"Divide and conquer," Venkman murmured with a grin.

Stantz told him, "I don't think it's meant-"

"Shut up, Ray." They crouched and stepped as quietly as possible, the only sound a steady faint whine from the PKE meter.

The odd lighting was soon found to be coming from a series of neon fixtures scattered about the place, each depicting the name of an alcoholic beverage along with a logo or other design. "You'd think they'd've turned those off before they left," whispered Ray as they stood at the edge of the bar area. In a step or two they'd be visible to anyone in the patron section unless they ducked low or crawled.

"Look," Pete said softly, and squatted, moving forward awkwardly like a duck until he was directly behind the bar. He reached toward the shadows of an open shelf, and slowly withdrew his hand with a huge carton of Goldfish Crackers in it, unopened. "Want some?"

Ray looked back at him haplessly.

"I used to live off these when I was kid and my dad and I hung out in the neighborhood bars."

"Really?"

He struggled with the milk-carton style top. "Oh, yeah," he continued, not catching the tone of Ray's voice. "And pretzel chunks and bowls of peanuts…and this one place he took me to served up unlimited bowls of popcorn, absolutely free."

There was a terrible clatter in the back punctuated by a yelp, and both of the Ghostbusters fell to their butts and swung their backs against the bar for cover.

"There's others?" queried a stranger.

Pete and Ray looked at each other, then upward slowly. There was a long pale neck extending over the edge of the bar that ended in a mop of black hair.

The racket continued as Winston attempted to free himself from the bucket he'd stepped in when they'd ambushed a closet full of cleaning supplies. Trying not to lose his balance, he crushed a plastic bottle of wood polish and collided with a flimsy metal shelf that had hanging space for brooms and mops beneath it. Knowing they were made, Egon clicked on his proton pack and stepped into shadows, covering his friend. Winston finally freed his boot and cast the broken bucket aside in aggravation before looking for his colleague. "I can't believe you backed up into a dark corner," he groused.

A pause, and then hoarsely, "I'm keeping you covered."

"You have more lights on you than a Christmas tree. Anyone in the vicinity would see you long before they saw me."

Sheepishly, the tall scientist emerged back into murky light.

The mop of stringy hair lowered slowly as the large, pale full-moon face it partially concealed came into view. "Hello, my pretties."

Peter tried to joke as he nudged Ray, "He thinks you're pretty."

Ray clicked on his proton pack.

A snaky pale arm defined with lean, ropy muscle and a strange, delicate pattern of black lace tattoo ink slithered down to seize hold of Pete's sleeve. "I know you," the strange, oddly modulated voice told him, "you're those guys from TV."

Ray tried to rise gracefully into a standing position, but the weight of the gear he carried made the process too slow and a bit ungainly. He pointed the end of his neutrino wand directly at the stranger and said, "We're the Ghostbusters, Buddy."

The elegantly long-limbed figure backed away fluidly, and they could now see he wore a loose black T-shirt with rips in it and a strange slogan inside some kind of bizarre-looking pentagram. Beneath it he wore an even more ripped dishwater grey shirt that showed through the top layer here and there. About his nonexistent hips coiled a ridiculously long belt studded with dull pyramids of burnished metal broken up every foot or so by a metal skull pierced with a ring. His pants were baggy and decorated with unnecessary zippers, rings, buckles and studs; they were black with stitching so white it nearly glowed beneath the neon. His footwear appeared to be heavy black boots bristling in a line of pointed metal spikes across the toes. He posed in a flippant, bemused manner like an over-acted vampire from some silly teen slasher film, his smile a bloodless line that stretched a tad too far across his ghastly pale features. "I see…but there are no ghosts here."

"Oh, we deal with all kinds of freaky," Venkman told him, using the edge of the bar to help pull himself to his feet. "Let me guess, tried a séance, turned into possession?"

One dark eyebrow rose, but where the eyes should have been were two indistinguishable smudges. It was difficult to tell if the guy even had eyes. "Is it still possession if both parties consent?"

"What did you try to summon?" asked Ray.

"Power."

"What kind of power?"

"Oh," the tall, lean figure told them, performing a lazy sort of spin, "the powerful kind."

"What color was it and did it come in solid, powder, liquid or herb form?" asked Pete.

The eerie smile returned. The guy had high cheekbones on a very slender face with a narrow chin that flared out at the jaws, and a long, prominent, slender nose. "I like the funny ones."

Venkman found that encouraging. "Oh, I can go all night."

"But can you go for eternity?"

Egon had maneuvered to one side of the bar, Winston to the other, both just out of sight, locked and loaded. They watched quietly, waiting for a weakness to manifest, or a distraction. By Spengler's best guess, the stranger was not merely possessed by a single entity, but acting more like the puppet of something so large that it would probably be impossible to manifest all at once. Unfortunately, he wasn't even certain if the lanky guy was still alive.

"What's that design on your shirt mean?" Pete tried, leaning casually across the bar-top with his proton thrower beside him.

The figure looked down and plucked at his attire. "Hmm…I have no idea. I think it just came this way."

"You got a thing for pentacles, though?"

"Symbols are impotent."

"Really? Wow. Hadn't thought of that before. So, where did you grow up? Are you from this area? Originally?"

The figure leaned back and shook his hair to the side, but his features remained blurry. "Places, spaces, time…it's all the same to me."

"Heh," Peter chuckled briefly, resting his jaw atop the heels of his upraised hands, "y'know, I got this friend you just gotta meet." When nothing happened, he thought about the last few minutes, then turned to Ray and asked, "Where's our friend?"

"She went with…no…I don't know! I'm not sure she even came in with us!"

Peter smiled pleasantly as he pretended to relax again. "You wanna head out, get some pizza maybe?"

"What I want…is to shake you from my back like fleas."

"Me, personally? Or, uh, did you mean, like, all of us?"

The man spun again with his hands outstretched before him and barstools, high-top tables, and two billiard tables slammed into the walls, raising clouds of dust and wood shavings, causing a couple of the neon lights to explode.

"All of us," Pete confirmed, turning toward the back of the bar. "Guys?"

Winston threw first, and they waited, trying to see what would happen next. The figure uttered an ear-shattering gurgling scream and convulsed wildly in place before popping like a stepped-on jelly donut. They groaned as chunks of wet viscera and goo laced with stretches of skin, tufts of hair, and shreds of fabric rained upon them. The worst were bone fragments and metal shrapnel that peppered them and opened fresh scratches across Venkman and Stantz. There hung in the air a fine red mist, and they all wished they could hold their breath long enough for it settle. The stench was horrific-too much like a butcher shop in need of a thorough scrub-down. Peter shuddered, aware he was sticky with Goth. Ray looked like a puppy that had just been kicked.

Egon stepped into view, waving his meter about. "I hate to say this-"

"Please don't then," Peter groaned. "Oh, God, oh, God…." He inhaled shakily and nodded, swallowing. "Okay, fine, what is it? No—wait. Let me guess…all we did was irritate it."

Turning a circle, the other man said, "I don't believe this is in actuality Ground Zero." They watched him walk away, following readings.

Winston gasped, "I…I didn't actually just…just kill a guy, did I?"

"Pretty sure he was beyond saving," Ray said.

"Pretty sure?"

Stantz smiled and patted the other man's shoulder, leaving a red handprint on his uniform. "Sorry, Z."

"And where is our little friend?" Peter wondered, trying to stop replaying the exploding ghoul in his mind.

"Oh, right." Ray looked around and finally noticed a dark shape in the shadows seated at a booth in a corner near the front of the establishment. "A-Amanda?"

"Hm?"

"'zat you?"

"Me?" they heard in her soft, distinctive voice.

"Did you enjoy the show?" Pete asked.

"Show?" She scooted from the long bench seat and stepped over debris carrying something in her hand. When she was close enough, they saw it appeared to be a half-eaten cheeseburger and fries on a plate. She was spotless; not even a bit of errant lint besmirched her.

Peter turned to look at Ray and saw him smearing gore over his uniform with a handful of cocktail napkins featuring green four-leaf clovers. When he looked back, the food was gone. "Hey! You saw that right?"

Winston looked at him strangely. "Saw what?"

"The cheeseburger and fries?"

"When?"

"Just now," he said, pointing at the girl.

Winston squinted. "I don't see anything."

"Not now! It's gone now!"

"But you said just now!"

Pete scowled at the girl, who seemed clueless while she chewed. She swallowed and he knew it was too late to say anything.

They heard Egon's voice call, "Hey, guys!"


	15. Chapter 15

15

"Did I kill that guy in cold blood?" Winston wanted to know.

"No," Egon assured him. "I am 98 percent certain that your actions were not the cause of his death."

"Take it," Peter insisted, waving a hand toward Zeddemore. "Try not to think about it too much."

"It's all I can think about," he murmured unhappily.

"So, what drags us to this neck of the alley?" Pete demanded, looking around.

"Gentleman, I believe we've found the source."

"Little more detail, Egon."

He pointed downward. "It may be some kind of an earth elemental."

"Elementals," echoed Ray. "Difficult to reason with."

"So, what do we have to do?" Pete asked. "Appease it somehow? Promise to stop littering and clean up the waterways?"

"Ideally we make contact with it and try to find out what it thinks it wants in order to calm it down again."

"And, how do we do that?"

Spengler said, "I believe that's what it took that young man for—to communicate with us."

"It had kind of an attitude problem," Pete mentioned.

"It probably isn't used to dealing directly with humans."

Stantz put in, "Elementals usually work through mediums and other types of sensitives. Wiccans often summon them in their ceremonies with no ill effects. They are generally watchers, caretakers, with the ability to influence people in order to help bring about desired results."

"Like genies?" Peter asked, making a face when they all frowned at him. "What? I thought maybe we were having a run on 'em."

Look at the layout of these buildings," Dr. Spengler continued.

"It's a circle," Pete said.

"It's a horseshoe," corrected Winston.

"It's a pentacle," Ray informed them.

"What's the deal with five-pointed stars?" Peter groused. "Who cares? What's the matter with trapezoids or, or dodecahedrons?" He grinned and mentioned, "Didn't think I knew any words that big, did ya?"

"Five-pointed symbols are very, very old," said Ray. "The ancient Egyptians used a five-pointed symbol to represent stars, and an almost identical symbol stands for both man and mountains in Chinese pictograms."

Egon added, "The five-pointed star is actually a very old symbol for Christ, representing the crown of thorns at his head and the wounds at his hands and feet."

"Okay, but still: why?"

"There's a very old belief system that claims that all of mankind was originally left here by an alien race tens of thousands of years ago," Ray told him. "When they return, they will recognize their own kind by the symbol of the five-pointed star."

"Great. So only witches and police officers will be saved?"

"I think we're missing the point," Winston interrupted. He pointed to what they'd thought was a door painted some dark color, but which was actually an open doorway. A female figure trotted out, head hanging down like she was held upright by an invisible cord that emerged from between her shoulders. She wore an oversized dark sweater or sweatshirt with some kind of lighter fabric top underneath, peeking out here and there and shot through with silver thread. Her skirt was knee-length and plain and a heavy fabric like corduroy. She wore opaque dark stockings and clunky dark shoes that laced up and looked sensible aside from the ridiculously thick soles that added inches to her height. When she drew near enough, her head tilted upward in a sickly manner as though she was a well-loved rag doll or antique teddy bear. Again, there were only dark smudges where her eyes should have been.

"Greetings," said Egon in his deep baritone. "I am Dr. Egon Spengler, and these are my colleagues, Dr. Stantz-"

"Hi," Ray said, lifting a hand briefly.

Peter looked at him like he needed to remind him they were on a job and not a meet and greet cocktail party. He offered a slight nod when he was introduced.

"Winston Zeddemore-"

Winston remained still, senses on alert.

"And…and…."

They glanced about, but the teenager had vanished once again.

"What do you want here?" The girl had the same strange way of talking, her voice rising and dropping in pitch and tone at unpredictable moments.

Ray stepped forward. "We were asked to come here and find out what all the fuss was about."

"Fuss?" Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated instead of graceful as the last guy's had been.

"Uh…you know, like the flickering lights, the bad smells, the zombies?"

"Zombies?"

"That was your doing, wasn't it? I mean, you weren't, like, battling some other earth-spirit or something, were you?"

"Earth…spirit?"

"I think she's new to English," Winston said.

Egon cleared his throat. "We've come to find out what you want…or need…in order to return to your normal…restful state."

Her head went back and she laughed loudly enough to make them all flinch. "There is nothing that I need."

"I think the other option was _want_, then," Peter reminded her.

"Want," she repeated, moving her mouth like she was tasting the word. "What I want…is for you to leave."

"Well, there's nothing I'd like more, but we're getting paid for this and we've gotta show something for our efforts," said Peter.

"What is the value of your life?" she queried, taking a couple of staggering steps toward him.

He swallowed, shuffling backward. "The-the value of my life?"

Winston mentioned, "All life is precious."

She slowly turned her head his way and fixed him with her empty, nothing stare.

After a few uneasy moments, he added, "All is one."

Her head cocked and she almost stepped toward him, but hesitated. "I will spare the messenger."

Peter looked around at the others. "Who's the messenger?"

Ray pointed toward Winston and Egon said, "I think she means him."

"Who elected you messenger? How'd you get to be the messenger?"

"Trickster," she said almost quietly, and Peter finally realized she seemed to be looking his way. "Me? The Trickster? Does he get spared?"

"He returns."

"I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head. "Have we met before?"

Her head turned so far they heard bone break and Winston felt a hint of relief. Certainly this mouthpiece of the spirit's was already dead, and thus there was a good chance the last one had been, too.

She was facing Egon. "The Wise Man?" he tried

"Adam," she said.

"Adam?"

Ray blurted, "The Trickster is a common character in many Native American stories. This may be some kind of Native American entity."

"But, does the Trickster _live_?" Peter asked.

"What tribes were here?" asked Egon.

Ray thought about it. "Wow. Algonquin? Seneca? There were so many…it would be hard to pinpoint a specific one without researching it."

Winston whipped out his cell phone. "Native American Indian tribes of the Hudson River Valley."

The phone was dysfunctional.

"Adam was the first scientist," Ray recalled. "The first person to study and give names to things."

"That's Christian, right?" asked Egon.

"Jewish?" suggested Ray.

"Let's just say she's _old_," Peter told them. "We're not here to win the washer/dryer set."

"Waitaminute," said Ray, stepping forward and waving a hand in the air. "There are five of us. You've only named three. What about the other two?"

"The Fool," she told him.

"Tarot cards," he blurted. "That's French, I believe."

"Him or her?" asked Peter, also taking a step closer.

A single finger cracked in an ugly manner as she aimed it at Stantz without moving her arm.

"Then that leaves Amanda," said Ray in a decisive manner.

"_She's not actually one of us,"_ Peter stage-whispered past a cupped hand.

"What about," he said, turning and trying to see into the shadows. "What about…the girl?"

"Do not try to distract me."

"I'm not," he replied, still looking away like he was talking to someone at a high school reunion instead of some horrific freak of nature using a corpse as a puppet. "We came here with somebody else…and you never reacted to her whatsoever in the bar. Your tricks didn't disturb her in the least. The whole time you were there, she was sitting in a dark corner eating a cheeseburger."

"I _knew_ someone else saw that!" Pete grunted, making a fist of recognition.

"So…what about her? Name her."

"There is no her."

"She's here somewhere. Amanda! A-man-da!"

"This is not someone."

"She's just as real as you are," he insisted.

Egon swung the PKE meter around, but it remained functional. "I don't think she's here, Ray."

Stantz looked ashen. "You think she'd just abandon us?"

"You bore me," the dead girl said.

"The Trickster doesn't die!" said Pete.

Winston said, "Messenger."

"I want that job!"

Winston shrugged.

"I will," said the corpse.

They waited.

"You…will what?" Spengler asked.

Her head turned toward him and her grin became huge and maniacal. "I. _Will_!"

Ray caught him by the sleeve. "_I am_ is the oldest prayer and name of the Christian God."

"Her name is Will?"

"No. I think it means she's making more things happen." They could hear screaming and sirens starting up again around them. "Bad things."

"Apparently."


	16. Chapter 16

16

They were startled by the sounds of gunshots very close by. Someone yelled and then they heard a rather disturbing, _"Gurk!"_

"There," said Winston, rushing toward the open door the ghoulish girl had emerged from. Ray followed suit while Egon moved slowly, waving his PKE meter around, and Peter stood his ground, uncertain where his focus ought to lay. The moment Egon had crossed the threshold and he realized he was alone with the mouthpiece of the nightmare that had taken over the town, he turned and hurried after him.

They had entered some kind of shop from the rear. Tall, cheaply made metal shelves were filled with boxes, jars, and bottles of bulk items. More boxes were lined against the narrow corridor. There appeared to be quite a bit of Sharpie graffiti on the walls amidst random splashes and psychedelic designs done in black-light paint. The place had a peculiar odor like burnt sugar, mildew, and freshly cut wood. From there they followed another corridor past a small bathroom featuring filthy fixtures and another room housing a plain card table and two mismatched chairs. A fringed square of fabric didn't quite serve as a sufficient tablecloth, and in the middle of it stood a candle within a cone of dribbled wax that cemented the bottle it coated to the fabric beneath. Past that the space opened up into an area that looked like it had been taken from a children's book…about nightmares. Ceiling and walls depicted a rainbow-hued twilight that filtered down between painted and perhaps actual papier-mâché twisted tree limbs that disgorged oversized eyes and pained-looking faces here and there. Mismatched living room furniture was set between shelves and displays featuring oddball merchandise like the shop owner didn't know whether he wanted to attract an earthy New Age crowd or heavily pierced, tattooed, studded, drug-experimenting death metal enthusiasts. In the center of the ceiling was a full moon that, upon closer inspection, contained a pentacle decorated within and without with nonsensical symbols. The floor beneath it held a much larger version of the same design, this one surrounded by the signatures of former and present coven members.

"Is this legit?" Venkman asked, trying not to step on anything specific lest it trigger additional weirdness.

Ray stood, mouth agape, staring up toward a corner. Egon's PKE meter went kaput and he accidentally collided with Ray. Winston had sunk to one knee so he could better look up at Amanda and attempt to gently persuade her to allow an upside-down police officer to resume his preferred upright posture.

"She's a witch!" the cop insisted. I saw lights in here and I told her to drop the weapon and when she didn't I fired at her!"

"Weapon?" Winston asked.

The cop pointed to a stick on the floor near the girl's feet.

"You consider a stick a deadly weapon?"

"Well the lighting is bad, she didn't drop it when I asked her to…and I think it's a wand."

Zeddemore reached past her to pick it up. "Yup. Made in China." He sighed. "I promise he won't hurt you. He's a good guy like the rest of us. You just startled him, is all."

She tilted her head and twisted her mouth to the side before exhaling softly and nodding. As she stepped away as if to browse the wares, the man sank slowly down the wall to the floor. His drooping comb-over touched the floor and he bent his neck so that he slid down onto his back, his legs dropping comically over his body until he grunted uncomfortably and rolled into an awkward crouch. He lifted a finger to point at her. "She's the cause of all this!"

"She's with us," said Ray, shaking his head as he approached her. "What made you come in here?"

She said nothing, didn't even indicate she had heard him, but wandered over to a door that opened for her and strolled into a much larger room with black-painted walls and glow-in-the-dark stars and glitter scattered across them and the ceiling.

"This is where they meet," he murmured.

"Who, Ray?" Venkman asked, trailing them a few steps behind.

"This is some parody of an occult shop. A number of which rent space to local covens."

"Then there are witches here?"

"No, Peter. Not likely. This kind of place attracts wannabes and occult-culture freaks more so than actual students or practitioners of various types of magicks."

"Then who are they?"

Ray looked where he pointed. Amanda stood looking down at a collection of still figures in mostly black clothing looking like bad horror film extras thirty years too late. "Well," he breathed, nearing to bend before one, "I wouldn't assume they're witches."

"Are they…breathing?"

"None of them. I'm guessing the Namer already harvested them as a supply of mouthpieces."

"Namor? Where have I heard that before?"

"What?"

Realizing his mistake, Pete shrugged. "Never mind."

At that moment a huge black bird made itself known by flying suddenly across the room, out of one wall of night and off through another.

The guys looked at each other.

"Nevermore," the teenaged girl said softly, stepping lightly over sprawled legs and performing a twirl.

They quickly hustled her out of the room, meeting the others just outside the door. Asked Egon, "Find anything?"

Stantz turned toward the police officer. "There's a line of bodies in there, probably locals."

"A line of bodies? What do you mean?"

Reluctantly, Ray lead him back within.

"Is she a witch, Egon?" Winston asked, staring at Amanda. She had picked up a chunk of bismuth and seemed fascinated by the play of light across it.

"Too powerful."

"Can we use her?" Peter asked.

"The problem is…we don't exactly know how."

Amanda set the mineral specimen down and wandered toward a semi-circle of ratty-looking chairs that smelled like smoke. She lifted items from a small table set between two of them, and eventually made her way over to the glass display case that glittered with piercing jewelry. She bent as if considering a piece despite the fact the case was unlit and reached swiftly past the glass to seize something and drag it forward.

The creature squealed, but revealed itself finally as a frightened child trying to remain more or less in spherical form. He trembled and his face glistened with snot and tears.

"What the?" Winston began, uncertain of what he'd just seen. He moved forward until he could touch the boy's hair. The child was very real. Squatting, he asked, "What's your name?"

"Tyler."

"Hi, Tyler. My name is Winston."

"You're a Ghostbuster."

"Yeah. What are you doing here?"

"I was," he began, straightening a little as he pointed to the solid and intact display case, "I was….I was _behind_ that."

"Yeah. We saw that. So, why are you hiding here?"

"I came here with my momma. Have you seen her?"

He hoped it wasn't the deceased thing they'd been conversing with outside. "There's a policeman here. Would you like to go with him? See if he can help you find your mom?"

The boy turned as though just noticing that something held his wrist. His eyes traveled up his arm and halted at the sight of the strangely pale hand, and then he turned to look back at the display case. He leaned a little Winston's way and whispered, "I saw her…and the cop just shot her…but she didn't fall down…."

"He missed," the Ghostbuster said with a reassuring grin.

"But, but…I was back there…."

"I know," Winston said, rising to his feet when he saw Ray again. "Look, we found this little guy and he's looking for his mother."

The police officer reached up to tilt his hat back and realized it was missing. "How d'you come to be here, kid?"

"My momma…she comes here sometimes. Sometimes with the moon. And she goes into that room there. And I stay out here and read books or play games." The kid, perhaps nine, gazed about the place. "I don't like the way it smells."

"Can you take him?" Winston asked, taking hold of the hand Amanda held and walking the boy toward the cop.

"Uh, well," he said, looking back toward the room he'd just left. "I…sure. This is the most normal thing I've dealt with all night. But…I'll have to take her with me, too."

Peter grinned broadly. "Try."

The man looked at him, then toward the distracted teen again. "You, uh…you said she's with you guys?"

Ray said, "That's right."

"And, uh…I should be able to track her down again…through you…whenever…when this night is…somehow over?" He swallowed.

"Most likely," Spengler supplied, reholstering his dead psychokinetic energy meter.

"Hey," interjected Pete with suspicion. "How do we know _he's_ not part of this?"

They all watched the child who stared back at them fearfully.

Amanda sighed and neared the boy to sweep an arm through his body like he was only a hologram. "Not this," she said as if it explained everything, walking past them and through a closed glass door.


	17. Chapter 17

17

They watched the police officer drive off and turned to hear a strange, sharp report behind them. The glass windows of the pseudo occult shop had cracked and shimmered with vibration. Winston grabbed Ray and managed to get hold of Peter's sleeve as he dove toward the gutter._ "Duck!" _he hollered just before the glass shattered. They were peppered with pellet-like shards. Most of the glass bounced harmlessly from Winston and Ray's backsides, but Peter had only been staggered and spun and thus remained at a crouch with a head full of glass. Egon had only shrugged to the side and was well coated also. Glittering crystals slid from their jumpsuits, some of it jutting out at scary angles, and while the two who had remained on their feet were just beginning to show webbing of fine red lines across their faces, necks, and hands, the teenaged girl squatted for a handful of the sharp stuff she poured between her fingers like sand.

"Okay," Peter said, rising slowly and wincing as he felt shards slide between his collar and his back. His left ear was bleeding and he hadn't noticed it yet, but a large red drop kept growing in size at his lobe, threatening to create an impressive stain when it finally met his shoulder. Before he could continue his thought they were startled by even louder sounds like gunshots too close for comfort, and looked about wildly for the source of the noises. A dark line spread across the face of the shop in jagged spurts that followed the lines of bricks beneath the paint. Egon recognized the danger and motioned them farther into the street, away from the structure. The sidewalk erupted into tree-branch patterns, sharp edges churning upward. Then a nice chunk of the building dropped toward them, falling in slow-motion, raising dust and chunks of bricks, mortar and cement while exposed cables popped like miniature fireworks. Hacking until he expectorated a long line of dust-filled saliva, Venkman swiped a sleeve across his face, then tried, "Obviously-"

The rest of the building began to fall away from them as a roar like Niagara Falls drowned out the rest of his sentence. Dust obscured some of the view, but it was soon very clear that some sort of a giant sinkhole was opening up in the center of the little collection of shops, swallowing everything for at least a block around. Venkman looked wildly for the stranger; the only one of them seemingly unaffected by it all. She had parked herself on a small bench across the street and was raptly watching the spectacle like it was some crazy action film being played out live just for her viewing pleasure. He knew she was key to resolving the situation if not simply getting them back home in one piece. Beneath their feet the ground rippled and warped like waves. The guys were tossed and jolted like popcorn. The edges of the sinkhole were spreading and he figured he might have one chance to make a single wish. His pack had powered down automatically after several minutes of non-use. He struggled to feel for the switch on the back that would warm it up and saw Ray's look of confusion. Trying to point at Amanda, he heard a familiar sound near him and saw that Egon had managed to power his pack up. Winston's thrower wand was damaged. It would be dangerous for him to attempt to utilize it. He was trying to spread his limbs out as far as possible to stabilize himself as though he was on cracking ice and not a paved roadway. The sidewalk shattered, sounding a lot like a heavy rain on a tin roof before it vanished from view. The more flexible asphalt began to curve away beneath them as the hole grew wider.

Peter flicked a switch on his thrower, but was unable to aim. He had no idea if his plan would work or not, but he could see that Ray and Egon were willing to give it a try also. The blacktop bucked, tossing him a few feet in the air and he hollered, losing his grip on his weapon. Egon fired and the stream went wild, dancing far past the teenager who remained aggravatingly still and serene like an uninvolved figure in a dream. They heard a fire truck draw near. Peter bounced and rolled toward the gap that was inevitably coming for him, uncertain whether he wanted to watch his fate unfold or not. Winston grabbed his ankle, but he was sliding.

The concrete on the other side became a wall of white fog and Amanda was lost. Egon was afraid his wild proton stream might hurt someone innocent and was trying to turn it off. If they'd only been able to get the girl's attention…the genie…whatever the heck she was…. She turned energy into matter and could disregard the laws of physics….

"_No,"_ they thought they heard.

Venkman landed hard upon knees, hips, ribcage, and chin, almost biting through the end of his tongue. He lay still, hurting.

Zeddemore remained upon his back staring dazedly up at a pretty pale fog that was beginning to break apart, revealing patches of inky blackness dazzling with stars. He remained in contact with one of Venkman's bootlaces. One of the shoulder straps to his proton pack had broken and it lay beside him at an odd angle, still somewhat strapped to one arm.

Stantz had pushed himself up from the waist, but hung his head as he suffered a terrible coughing fit.

Spengler took a halting deep breath and held it, counting slowly to fifteen before releasing it, and then he rolled onto his side to see what was happening. His damaged proton pack was tangled up in his legs.

Feet maneuvered gingerly around and between them. Amanda wore black half boots with low heels that made no sound as they picked their way over loose gravel and other crunchy debris. As she neared Venkman, he saw for the first time that he was apparently balanced on the edge of an abrupt drop and froze in fear. She strolled past him, the soles of her shoes remaining on the same plane she'd trod when still on asphalt…but there appeared to be only air beneath her. Peter slowly brought an arm around to test the empty airspace he assumed he practically dangled over, and while his skin registered the movement of warm air, his brain told him he remained on a flat and stable surface.

As the dust settled, some of it caught by errant drafts and sent dancing and whirling around them, they noted the dead woman dangling in mid-air at about the center of where the ring of buildings had been. She faced her visitor and said nothing.

Peter convinced himself to roll toward the drop-off. He suffered terrible vertigo looking past his hands as he put weight on them, watching them flatten out. _It's glass_, he told himself. _There's a giant sheet of glass between me and death, so it's okay. I'm okay._ Winston was watching him, breathing hard, and having difficulty processing what he was seeing. As Amanda drew closer, there was a sudden tremor that made them all yelp and yodel. Venkman panted over his splayed hands, watching loose soil bounce and skitter far down into darkness. The asphalt had broken away from beneath his knees and he didn't even know it yet. Winston tried to sit up on one hip, watching incredulously as his friend remained in place in mid-air.

Ray tried to rise, but was still unsteady with shock. His equilibrium quivered and he staggered backward, falling over Egon. That's when Peter glanced back to make sure everyone else was okay and finally saw something that made him go stiff with fear.

"You're okay," Spengler assured him. "But…you'd be safer if you crawled farther this way."

He looked down past his hands and knees and squeaked, "I don't wanna move!"

"I gotcha, Peter," Winston told him soothingly, reaching for his ankle again. He grabbed both of them. "I'm going to guide you backward. If you fall, I've got you."

"I think you weigh more than I do. Please don't fall over the edge on me." Closing his eyes, he swallowed, and then opened them again, preferring to gaze straight ahead and pretend the ground was still solid.

"_No, Ray!"_ he heard Spengler call as Stantz found his feet and tottered forward, pausing for only a moment before strolling directly over the edge of the sinkhole, keeping his focus on the two females ahead of him.

Amanda had stopped before the ghoul that dipped and bobbed ever so slightly, apparently unable to enjoy the illusion of terra firma. She stared into the empty sockets of the impossibly sad, grayish face, long black tendrils of hair flowing about her as though she was underwater. The brows of the corpse seemed to lift and another tremor occurred.

"No more," the teenager told her.

The marionette-like figure writhed a little before turning toward the other girl with her mouth a large, vague shape that widened grotesquely as she neared her adversary.

The girl stayed her ground as the other dissipated into a wet, pinkish grey mist that swirled and elongated like a mini-tornado. Her clothing fell to shreds and pieces whipped by, but not a puff of disturbed air touched the teenager. The earth shuddered and a horrible sound erupted from below like a distorted chorus blended with the sound of a speeding subway train trying to brake around a curve. Peter dropped and rolled toward Winston, but the ground crumbled away from beneath them all. Vivid flashes of colored lights astounded and disoriented them and they added their own screams to the cacophony. The whirlwind of body fluids and viscous matter and loose hair spun around and engulfed Amanda completely. The bench broke and fell into the widening chasm in two pieces followed soon thereafter by a fire hydrant that shot water high into the air and several trees planted by the city as part of their beautification project. The fire engine that had stopped half a block away was thrown into reverse and backed smartly into an ambulance that was whizzing around the corner. The occupants fled the vehicles like cockroaches, scrambling as far as they could, but unwilling to miss the spectacle. Streetlights and street signs dropped and vanished. A mailbox tilted and dove into nothingness while a statue of two children playing with a dog broke and slid into the earth's widening maw. No one could see above the vacuum for all the dust it was creating until Winston banged his thrower against what felt like something solid and aimed toward where he'd last seen the two females.

The faulty wand glowed with energy, died, began an intermittent whine while a warning light on the back came on followed by another. Pushing himself upright, he managed to get his bearings when a fortunate wind gust cleared a few puzzle pieces of airborne debris from his view. In the center of the mess churned a whirlwind black and ominous. Winston provoked his pack into overload, lifted it and spun with it like an Olympic discus champ before he tripped over Venkman and threw badly. The wand tried to wriggle free as though it knew what was coming. The pack disappeared into roiling clouds and presumably slid a bit off the mark. Bending, he grabbed a handful of Venkman's jumpsuit and started power-dragging him toward the edge of the mess. He didn't honestly believe they would clear the blast zone. He never once thought their chance of survival was good.

There was an odd lemon-yellow flash that lit a section of dirt-filled air like half a glowing sphere prickling with a few fine lances of light. The light died and was replaced by a smaller, fainter sea-green glow that lingered, throbbing gently for a few tremendously long seconds before the actual explosion occurred.

Everyone thought they were dead. Spengler hadn't seen anything. He'd been concealed by choking dust, coughing, hacking and trying to crawl away from what he thought of as Ground Zero. Winston hadn't so much been thrown off his feet as possessed by an undeniable impulse to leap at the last second, legs pumping, landing awkwardly on an ankle before he hit ground and rolled. Peter had tried to crawl while being dragged, but collapsed, his eyes and throat stinging. And Ray had remained still throughout the ordeal, entranced, innately knowing everything would, someway somehow turn out okay. Even if it meant he was dead.

The dust settled eventually. Amanda stood, untouched, unmarred, and facing Ray. He smiled beatifically at her, feeling like he was glowing. She watched him passively, her very fair skin nearly glowing from what little light reflected off of it. She eventually moved toward him, and he reached his hands out as if to take hers in them. She ignored him, so he thought he was going to get a hug instead, but his arms closed in until he was hugging himself and he dropped to his knees in the air, coughing a little and whispering, "Oh, _my_…."

No one had seen her walk through him aside from a few of the emergency responders. As far as they knew, she was part of the problem and to be avoided. She reached Pete first and reached for his belt, hauling him upright by it with one hand until he was steady on his feet, hacking against a fist as he rubbed at his eyes and watched her move on. She patted Winston's back until he moved, her fingers gliding down his jumpsuit until they found the injured ankle. She peeled his laced boot back like a banana skin, drew his sock down and held his ankle for a few counts before lowering it gently and moving on. Finally she approached Egon, who had managed to work himself into a sitting position, and pulled the cracked lenses from his face. She held up the eyeglasses and looked through them, tried them on and blinked at him, then placed them back upon his nose. The lenses were once more whole and even spotlessly clean.

With a sigh, she continued on until she had reached actual ground, and then she wandered off in the general direction of the Ectomobile.


	18. Chapter 18

18

It was not uncommon after a particularly exhausting or exciting case that the guys would fall asleep on the ride back to their old, converted firehouse, or soon after reaching it. Dr. Spengler had requested that their equipment be restored, and so it was—beyond any reason, after which they wandered a radius of several blocks around the site of the massive sinkhole, seeking any kind of psychokinetic residue, and finding nothing at all.

Uneasy about it, they declared the area "clean" and obtained information from the Chief of Police concerning to whom to address the bill. Then they had returned to their heavily rigged automobile to find the strange teenager curled up on the back seat, fast asleep already. She woke at some point to find Dr. Stantz at the wheel, his mind a million miles away and drifting further with exhaustion. He had taken several wrong turns without even noticing and was on the verge of nodding off behind the wheel just before dawn when Amanda sat upright and stared straight ahead and the Ecto-1 took the appropriate turns that would bring them all home seemingly on its own.

Golden beams of sunlight filtered between buildings and found their way through accustomed routes into the silent Hook & Ladder No. 8, highlighting magical-looking dust sparkles drifting around the silent car. A hinge creaked and Janine Melnitz walked in, her heels sounding something like pony hooves as she trotted past the elongated vehicle to deposit her purse on her desk and went to see if coffee had been made. Eventually she returned with a mug and picked up the newspaper she had grabbed from out front on her way in. There was nothing in it about the guys' adventure, so she remained oblivious to their close proximity until one of the heavy doors creaked open and Dr. Stantz stumbled out.

"Ray!" she cried, startled, and he waved her to calm herself. She drew closer, trying to walk on her toes to keep from making too much noise as she approached, finally realizing that the rest of the gang was still sound asleep in the car. "Oh my gosh! Long night, or what?"

He stretched, joints popping and cracking, then yawned. "You have no idea." He scratched at his ribs thinking he must look a mess, unaware that despite the night's activities he appeared whole and unmarked, his uniform pristine.

"So…what happened?"

He gazed fondly at her, tasted the bland pastiness of sleep in his mouth and asked, "Could I borrow your car?"

Despite her displeasure with the request, she relented and forfeited her keys with a warning that whatever he intended to do with it better not be work related. Less than five minutes later he was cruising into early rush hour traffic, heading back to SoHo.

Amanda sat in the passenger seat appearing no less sleepy than she usually did and just as unruffled. He'd thought long and hard about his decision during the night's drive, listening to his colleagues drone on about wishes and how things were going to change even as they were slowly succumbing to longer and longer yawns and greater gaps of silence between their musings. "The way I figure it," he told her gently, realizing she was wearing sunglasses and not knowing if she'd found or manufactured them, "if you're meant to remain here with us, then you'll undoubtedly find your way back no matter what I do, and if not…well, then I guess things stay the same. Assuming everything will go back to some kind of normalcy…I mean, we saw what you did with our equipment, and I seem to look okay," he added, quickly tilting the rear-view mirror for a glance at his face. He was even cleanly shorn! "So, anyway, I'm betting the ghosts that disappeared from our containment unit will start showing up again, probably in the same general places we originally found them, and the city will go back to being haunted again, well, now and then, here and there the way it was before. Oh, and Slimer," he recalled with a smile. "Peter will hate that…or pretend he does. I'm not always sure which it is. Do you think, I mean, will the ghosts all come back, Amanda? Do you think they will?"

She shrugged, seeming to enjoy watching the scenery drift by.

"The thing is, I wouldn't know where to begin to define you. I'm certain enough research will give us some better understanding of what it was we were dealing with last night. But you…well, Egon practically wants to dissect you, and Peter wants to live his fantasies and Winston's trying to be the good guy here, but we can still see he's battling temptation. And…the only thing your staying here will bring us is…extreme change. Not that change is a bad thing, but what if there were no ghosts…and the only calls we got were ones like last night…just the really, truly powerful things that I guess can withstand your presence, or your, your energy field or whatever it is about you that otherwise repels them. What if instead of a handful of minor calls every month or so to keep us on our toes, to introduce us to new ideas and experiences…what if the only calls we got were a handful of, of, call 'em Code Tens a year? Long stretches of extraordinary boredom interspersed with five or six turn-your-hair-white calls we probably wouldn't even survive without you….

"And that's another thing," he continued, maneuvering closer to their destination, "not to make any accusations or anything—nothing personal—but if you had the ability all along to quell that mess…well…I guess we just don't know how to communicate with you properly, to, to trigger you or whatever. I mean, it seemed like you knew we were in mortal danger all along, but you just let it play out…." He looked at her and she was staring straight ahead, her jaw resting on her right fist, right elbow against the base of the window. "I can see that you are unfazed by just about anything. Probably anything. But good heavens, the rest of us were convinced we were gonna die!" She turned her head his way briefly, then resumed her forward watch. "Did you think it was fun-what we were doing? What we were going through? Do you think that's the sort of thing we endure on a regular basis? We're mortal beings, Amanda. We're just not made from the same stuff as you."

He realized he'd let himself get a little angry and felt guilty immediately. "I'm sorry. Clearly we're different from you. Maybe you're not that familiar with our kind. But, letting the guys get carried away playing Wish Fulfillment Fantasy with you is only going to bring on a whole heap of trouble." He drew into a parking space and shut everything down before exiting. He hadn't heard the passenger side door open or close, but once he had exited, he saw that the girl was already on the nearest stretch of sidewalk, waiting for him. "Please don't think I don't like you…or any of us for that matter, but I think each of us wants you around for the wrong reasons, and I can't see that being mutually beneficial for any of us." He walked and she kept pace, although she lagged just slightly behind. He reached to muss her hair and she turned to smile at him "Did you at least have fun?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well…that's something. Aside from the whole nearly-dying thing and having my wits scared out of me more times than I care to admit, I guess I sort of had fun, too."

"An' you?" she asked, looking up at him again.

"I had fun."

"No…Peter wants bunnies and Egon wants science and Winston wants a better life and Ray…."

"Ray," he said, smiling as he let his gaze drift skyward. "Y'know what I was thinking last night?"

"No."

"So, you're not psychic. Okay. As I was falling asleep, I remembered that when I was younger and really starting to get excited about parapsychology, I always thought it would be truly amazing if someway, somehow, I could someday have an actual conversation with Harry Price."

"Harry…Price."

"Yeah. Originally I thought it would be Harry Houdini. He was a great debunker of fraudulent mediums, you know. He left a code word for his widow in the event of his death that she was to try and receive through a medium to prove both that there are some genuine psychics in the world and that there truly is another form of existence on the other side."

"Side of what?" They were nearing the statue of Cybele and Ray found it both mesmerizing and yet strangely repugnant as usual.

"Side of…life. Death. Life after death."

"Ghostbuster," she reminded him.

"I know, but when his widow tried to find someone who knew the word…twice she claimed the experiment failed. So…there's something more than dying and becoming a semi-transparent entity that may or may not resemble who you were in life. I mean, different religions have differing beliefs of what's to come after the end, and there's apparently a whole pantheon of god-like beings who pop in and out of their realms or dimensions or what have you…like you apparently did."

"Me?"

"Where are you from again?"

"Montana," she said, eyeing the statue and not finding it terribly appealing.

"Maybe after death there's…Montana. I've heard it's nice out there. In parts. Can get brutally cold, though…." He stopped and plunged his hands into the pockets of his suit. Only a few of the people passing by paid them any mind, and even then it wasn't much mind at all. "Oh," he said, suddenly reaching for a breast pocket so he could withdraw a card. He examined it quickly, and then handed it to her. "It's not a bologna sandwich, but that's our contact information and address in case you ever…want to visit or hang out again." She smiled as she accepted it, and while he never saw it move toward a pocket, he soon realized it had vanished from her hand entirely. "I really want you to stay," he admitted as he took her hands in his and noted for the first time the comforting, sleepy, tingling sensation they imparted. "That's neat." He reluctantly released her and took a step backward. "Well, thank you. For everything. And…maybe I'll see you around sometime…for brunch later…or the next time things get horrifically out of hand…or if I ever get to visit Montana."

She cocked her head and watched him hold up a palm, closing it for a second before holding it straight again, and then he dropped his arm and turned away, bee lining for the car, hoping she was and hoping she was not following him. He turned when he reached the parking spot and pretended to be mildly interested in the distant statue as he fumbled unnecessarily with the keys. She was nowhere to be seen. He waited for a couple of heartbeats, then unlocked the door and expected her to be already buckled into the passenger seat. The car was empty, but he smiled at the sight of the still-buckled safety belt.


	19. Chapter 19

19

His phone played a Muddy Waters tune and he fished it from a pocket to glance at as he sat at an intersection. No number or name showed on the screen. He considered ignoring it while he was caught between deciding if he'd rather grab breakfast somewhere or just collapse into bed. It ceased, but started up again before he could repocket it. He pressed an image of an old-fashioned phone receiver and said, "Hello. Dr. Stantz speaking."

"Dr. Raymond Stantz?"

"Yes, sir. That would be me. How may I help you?"

Traffic began to move and he hated to be on the phone while he drove, but then he heard a siren and watched all the cars freeze, waiting for an emergency vehicle to make its way through the intersection.

"Dr. Stantz…my name is Dr. Harry Price."

"Hello, Dr. Price," he said, finally catching a glimpse of flashing lights.

"I understand…that you've been wanting to speak with me for quite a long time now."

"I…who? Did you say Harry Price?"

"I did."

"Harry Price. Dr. Harry Price. And what exactly is it that you do, Dr. Price?"

A pause, and then, "Well, I used to be an investigator something like yourself, seeking evidence of the paranormal and ways we could-"

"Ha-ha," said Ray and disconnected the call, dropping the phone onto the floor behind his seat. "Very funny, Amanda."


End file.
